health articles business management businesses Marketing sales Technology Business finance Lean Manufacturing small business Investing articles employee health

Incentives to help employees quit smoking

biking30460846.jpgEmployers are starting to take aggressive action against their employees that engage in unhealthy lifestyle choices like smoking. Smoking cost employers billions of dollars a year. Smoking is 100 percent treatable, unlike other high-risk factors. To get your employees to quit smoking, you may need to engage in some forceful procedures like penalties. Before you penalize your employees for smoking, try offering an incentive to quit first.

Quitting smoking for the health benefit isn't always enough to inspire some people. Financial incentives are always beneficial for people that want to quit smoking. A lot of companies will reward them each month they remain smoke-free or they may reward them for a specific amount of time when they are smoke-free (like 6 months or a year). If you don't want to give out cash incentives, offer non-monetary rewards like a vacation or gift certificates.

A good way to hand out incentives is to reward them with smaller ones along the way. For example, agree on a date when the employee will stop smoking and reward them with a small gift card on that date. Then, give them another gift card when they make it to 1 month without smoking. You can continue doing this until they reach the big goal of staying smoke-free for one year. Offering smaller incentives along the way will keep them motivated and it can help to inspire them to continue working harder so they can reach their end result which is a nice big prize like $1,000 or a cruise.

Work out some arrangements with travel companies so you can offer nicer incentives to your employees. If you offer incentives often, the travel company may be able to get you the price of the vacations for half the retail value. This saves your company a ton of money and your employees are under the impression that you are paying thousands of dollars for their vacation.

The American Lung Association has found that second-hand smoke also costs employers around $5 billion in indirect costs. Workers can claim unemployment or disability due to smoking. Unemployment and disability costs will cost your company more money. If you have a policy on smoking and do everything in your power to prevent smoking, you won't need to worry about the additional costs you could have as a result of employees that smoke. Second-hand smoke is dangerous to everyone. Most smokers do not realize that they are slowly killing the people they love when they smoke. If you get your employees to quit smoking; try offer additional incentives to get their family members to quit smoking.

Health insurance companies will charge higher premiums to non-smokers if they reside with a smoker. So this means your healthcare costs may still be high because your former smoking employee is still being exposed to second-hand smoke. Offering incentives to the family members is a little pricey, but it can save you a lot of money if they will quit smoking too. The incentives do not need to be as extravagant as the ones you give to your employees, but it is nice to reward them with something like a gift card, company t-shirt, or a backpack. Whatever the incentive is, make sure it has some value so your employees and their loved ones will make efforts to quit smoking.

Take an aggressive stand against smoking. Let all your employees know they will b fired if they are caught smoking (this is only if you had them sign contracts stating that they will not smoke). If you plan on keeping your smoking employees on staff, give them a chance to quit smoking or force them to pay extra money from their paycheck to keep their health insurance.

,
FREE: Get More Leads!
How To Get More LeadsSubscribe to our free newsletter and get our "How To Get More Leads" course free via email. Just enter your first name and email address below to subscribe.
First Name *
Email *


Get More Business Info
Sponsored Links
Recent Articles

Categories

Copyright 2003-2020 by BusinessKnowledgeSource.com - All Rights Reserved
Privacy Policy, Terms of Use