Creating A Tobacco Free Workplace

Creating a smoking cessation program in the workplace is a great way to reduce your health insurance costs but to focus on employee health. Smoking cessation programs help to raise awareness to your employees that smoke and to encourage them to give up their bad habits. These programs also will charge employees that engage in smoking, forcing them to pay for the extra health insurance costs that they are forcing the company to have. When you have too many smokers on your payroll, it does increase the costs tremendously of your health care premiums. This is why so many companies have opted to start having the employees pay for a portion of the health insurance costs since they are the reason why the costs are driving upwards.

Introduce the new program to your employees gently. You need to give your employees enough time to try and quit smoking and to get healthy before they are forced to start paying more money for their unwise lifestyle habits. It is important that you have an meeting with the entire staff to talk about the smoking cessation program and to acquire their feedback on the matter. Of course there will be resistance to the new program but with the right approach and tools in place, you can limit the hostility toward the company.

When you have smokers in the workplace, you not only have to deal with the health costs but you also have to deal with the annoyance that smoking is to other people. Your other co-workers are being unfairly subjected to second-hand smoke and even if they aren't breathing it in, the smell of smoke on their co-workers clothes can cause annoyance, irritation, and headaches. The other thing you will notice is that the furniture that the employee uses may even start to have a stench of smoke left behind. As an employer you have to address these serious issues, despite the fact that it may cause some employees to be upset. You don't want to target anyone specifically but you do need to talk about smoking in the workplace and stick to your guns when you are creating a tobacco free workplace.

The polices that you create and implement need to be clear, precise, and firm. You have to implement the program and to stick to it in order for it to have any type of impact on your staff. Good managers can help out as they will be in charge of making sure your employees are not going to abuse the program and that they are actually sticking to it properly. They can also provide help in giving your employees tips on how to quit smoking and to stay with the program correctly.

You do need to make sure that you have an area for your employees to go outside and smoke. You want to provide them with an area where they can smoke so they can try and limit their co-workers from breathing in some second-hand smoke. The way in which you focus on implementing a smoking cessation program will make a big difference in hopefully motivating your employees to quit or at least to helping them understand the risks and why you are implementing a program.

There are many different types of smoking cessation programs that you can choose from. You have to be firm but at the same time you have to be reasonable. Smoking is a choice so it is reasonable that you are telling the employees that their choice is the reason why they will pay a higher rate for insurance. If your company has a good tobacco free policy, everyone within the company will benefit from it and you will find that you have a healthier and productive working environment.