Legally regulate employee smoking

Employee smoking can cause your healthcare costs to go up quite high. Combine smoking with obesity and you have enormous healthcare costs that are just going to frustrate your HR department as they look for ways to cut spending on healthcare costs. It is hard to talk to your employees that are battling smoking and obesity but at the same time, their risky health behavior is to blame for the rising healthcare costs in America. The Environmental Protection Agency actually recommends that all employers create smoking policies so they can protect their employees that do not smoke but could become ill because of the effects that second-hand smoke can have. So what can you do if you are battling smoking in the workplace? Here are some excellent tips that will be able to help.

Understand the state and federal laws pertaining to smoking
The Small Business Administration can provide you with great tips on how to combat smoking in the workplace and they also have some great programs that you can choose to implement in order to prevent smoking. It is vital that you take the time to research laws in your state so that you know what is legal and legitimate and what is not. Can you charge your employees that are costing the company more money because of their risky behavior? You can implement a ban on smoking in the workplace along with making your company a smoke-free zone so they cannot smoke on company premises, which also means they cannot smoke in their own vehicle as long as it is in the parking lot. Make sure that creating a smoking and non smoking area will be beneficial to the health of your other employees and always make sure that the smoking area is not near the ventilation system or the smoke will just get filtered into the rest of the company and cause everyone to be exposed to it. This can lead to additional respiratory problems and possibly lung cancer for individuals that are otherwise healthy.

Laws vary from state to state when it comes to smoking cessation so it is important to figure out which laws your company fits under. There are some smaller companies that will not be able to use smoking cessation laws the same way that the larger companies can.

Crunch some numbers
When you are presenting a smoking cessation program to your employees it helps to have some numbers that you can go off. Crunch some numbers to show your staff just how risky their behavior is to your company. You want to show them how much money it costs the company in healthcare costs along with lost production and employee absences. As you crunch these numbers, you will quickly see just how devastating smoking really is and how it does impact just about every single aspect of your company. Many smokers don't realize the consequences of their decisions until they are shown the proof in numbers.

Get their opinions
Before you just enact a program, you really need to go over the program with the employees. You need to hear directly from them what they think about the new policy and to make sure that the policy is going to be fair for everyone. If you are punishing just one specific group like the smokers but not the obese employees, the smokers will feel picked on and may end up filing a complaint. You really need to design a fair policy and look at all of the different things that can make it easier for you to create a fair policy for everyone at the organization.