Publication
Cost and benefit analysis of smoking cessation in the workplace
1. Introduction
The issue of employee smoking in the workplace has become increasingly important in recent years. Awareness of the dangers of passive smoking has led to concerns about the health of employees and the need for protection from environmental tobacco smoke. Furthermore, as a result of EU legislation and recent legal cases, the responsibility for the protection of employees from such dangers clearly lies with the employer, making it necessary for firms to pay close attention to the problem.
In addition to the health issue, employee smoking imposes considerable costs on employers. Evidence shows that workers who smoke are absent from work more often than their non-smoking colleagues which results in a loss of output. Time is also lost as workers take ‘smoke breaks’ or, if permitted, smoke ‘on the job’. Insurance premiums may be higher as a result of previous claims for fire damage due to smokers’ materials and tobacco smoke may also result in damage to plant and machinery.
Smoking also imposes costs on the individual and society. Costs to the individual are evident through an increased risk of developing diseases such as lung cancer. Costs to society are those which extend beyond the individual smoker and have an impact on society as a whole. These include the harmful effects imposed on non-smokers through passive smoking, and the costs borne by National Health Service as individuals receive treatment for smoking induced diseases. These costs are borne by society as resources are diverted away from other demands.
A workplace smoking cessation policy can help to reduce some of the costs attributable to employee smoking, such as saving time spent taking smoke breaks and reducing employee absence due to smoking related disease. If cost savings are a major reason for introducing a policy, the type of policy adopted by an employer is likely to depend upon the areas in which savings are perceived. A total ban on workplace smoking will help to reduce the amount of environmental tobacco smoke inhaled by co-workers and will also protect machinery and products from potential damage. However, if the target of the policy is to improve the health of smoking employees and reduce absence from work, the employer should aim at a smoking cessation intervention.
The benefits of a workplace smoking cessation policy extend beyond cost savings to the employer. The workplace setting provides a valuable opportunity to provide cessation help to a large population. A successful policy which reduces the number of workers smoking would then create benefits to society as a whole including savings to the NHS and a reduction in exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
The purpose of this research was to identify the major costs borne by employers as a result of smoking in the workplace and to estimate how these costs may affect Scottish employers. A secondary aim was to investigate the economic aspects for Scottish employers introducing smoking cessation programmes for their workers. The report is structured as follows.
In Section One the literature to date is reviewed and the major costs of smoking in the workplace and the benefits to employers and society which result from the introduction of smoking cessation policies are identified. In Section Two the results from a survey of employers in Scotland, which aimed to provide details of the smoking policies and the cessation help offered by these employers, are presented. The results from the focus group work conducted with six Scottish employers are presented in Section Three. The survey results and data from the literature review are combined in Section Four in an attempt to provide a framework for estimating the costs of smoking for Scottish employers. The work investigated details of the company’s smoking policy and their experiences with the policy. The attitudes of company employees towards different types of policy are also detailed, together with recommendations as to how firms employers should be assisted in the introduction of cessation help in the workplace.