Posted on 06/05/2013 3:53:26 AM PDT by grundle
TUESDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- Compared to nonsmoking employees, every staff member who lights up costs their employer nearly $6,000 more each year, according to a new report.
The researchers found that more time off, smoking breaks and added health care costs were to blame for this discrepancy. The findings could have implications for smoking policies in the workplace, they suggested.
"Employees who smoke impose significant excess costs on private employers," Micah Berman, of the College of Public Health & Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, and colleagues wrote. "The results of this study may help inform employer decisions about tobacco-related policies."
For the study, the investigators analyzed previous studies in order to estimate the costs associated with employing a smoker. In making their calculation, they also analyzed absenteeism, presenteeism (lower productivity while working due to smoking-related health problems), smoking breaks, health care costs and pension benefits for smokers.
The study, published in the June 3 online edition of Tobacco Control, revealed that low productivity due to more missed days at work costs employers, on average, $517 annually for each employee that smokes. Meanwhile, presenteeism costs $462 annually for each smoker, smoking breaks cost $3,077 a year per smoker and excess health care expenses cost $2,056 annually for every employee that smokes.
Because smokers are more likely to die at a younger age than nonsmokers, annual pension costs were an average of $296 less for each employee who smoked, the researchers noted. Overall, the total estimated cost to employers was $5,816 per year.
In the United States alone, 19 percent of adults smoke, putting themselves at greater risk for cancer, heart and lung disease. Some U.S. companies avoid hiring smokers or have started charging employees who smoke higher premiums for health insurance, the researchers pointed out in a journal news release.
"It is important to remember that the costs imposed by tobacco use are not simply financial costs. It is not possible to put a price on the lost lives and the human suffering caused by smoking," Berman's team wrote. "The desire to help one's employees lead healthier and longer lives should provide an additional impetus for employers to work towards eliminating tobacco from the workplace."
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides more information on smoking and tobacco use.
An inebriated HR lady at a EMR/Fairchild Weston told me that they secretly tested for nicotine along with the reported tests for illegal drugs. If the test was positive then HR recommended not hiring. The cost of a smoker was many time the cost of a non-smoker.
This was around 1988 and all the top directors smoked cigars. (Incidentally, when the president gave up the cigars they all did. It’s called mirroring behavior.)
BS!! Most smokers I know produce close to twice as much as non smokers. And, if they would let us smoke in our work area instead of going to a designated smoking area, we would get a lot more done.
One thing I never understood is how smokers get to take smoking breaks several times a day. If they take four at ten minutes each, that is over three hours of stolen time per week. Over 150 hrs a year just in breaks- that is almost getting a month off if working a forty hour work week.
I worked in an office situation for a year and the smokers would email each other and meet in the parking lot several times a day to smoke and gossip while we worker drones kept plugging away.
Then they would come in and stink up the office. Yes, smokers, you stink.
Bull.
Oh, now you’ve done it.
The smokers on FR will be out in force. They fight like cornered animals when you so much as point out anything negative about smoking, even something as innocuous as a simple study which is essentially a waste of money (the conclusions are obvious).
In any case, the power of physical and mental addiction is incredibly strong, especially on those who have already fully submitted to it. Make no mistake, the smoking jihadis WILL be attacking you.
hose that are still alive, anyway.
Since smokers die so young they are saving us a fortune in Social security and Medicare benefits.
They are paying a hell of a lot of our taxes for us, and they are keeping people working producing cigarettes.
No I don’t smoke and I don’t encourage it,but if we attack people for bad habits , lets attack Homosexuals, Drunks, and people who endanger themselves, like bicycle riders, horseback riders, parachutists, and bungi jumpers.
This is crap. Made up trash for the anti-smoking bullies. Do people with asthma or other lung disease nonsmokers who may actually miss more time at younger ages get this treatment?
I typed reports for a lung doctor who kept “records” and once maybe he found a patient with no smoking or second hand smoke to blame it on. Facts did not matter. Smoked one cig at age 12,50 years ago? It was the smoking.
But, but, but it's just a habit.
Like an empty beer can found in the back of a truck involved in an accident, it will be labeled alcohol related, regardless of his BAC.
I’ll tell you how I do it.
I do it on my own time.
I don’t worry about when other people are in the bathroom or shooting the ****.
It is not my concern when they are not at work.
So long as their time card is correct.
Next up. Employees that consume sugar cost employers $X,XXX more a year. New ban in effect. New luxury tax applied causes candy prices to double. You know how these guys roll
I think of that phrase every time I see the smokers at work crowding into a small gazebo multiple times in all manner of bad weather.
You're sure you got more done than they did? My smoking colleague goes down about each hour or two to light up. He doesn't gossip, not his style. He is a deep thinker and the most knowledgeable person on our team. I'm certainly not going to tell him how to run his life or career.
You got that right! If I have a problem I am working on and am having trouble finding a solution, I can take a smoke break, think about it, and come up with a solution.
Absolutely agree and most of the smokers I’ve worked with in the past are consistently sick.
They do not get more done, usually less, and yes they stink up the place.
I don’t hire smokers.
DITTO THAT!
Are there no nonsmokers in your work area—or do you not care about them?
We got our two 15 minute breaks a day, we smoked then.
If there is a problem with people just stopping work to go smoke, make scheduled break system and stick with it.
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