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.
What you have done is judge other people and then whined about them. Sounds like a waste of time to me.
We live in an age of made up stats and pseudo science all designed to further the control of we the people by government. When someone dares to point out the BS being used to rationalize this control they are called "Smoking Jihadis" or "Teabaggers" "climate change deniers" "Rightwing militia groups" and "gun nuts" amongst others. It always the same old name calling to avoid a rational debate.
I don't care if companies hire or don't hire smokers as long as they can hire and not hire for any other reason they like. I don't care if if a company allows smoking in the building, in the building in designated areas, only outside, only outside in designated areas or not at all. That's the freedom we once had in this country that has been taken away.
Now let's just say that it's all true. Smokers cost more so let's not hire them. How much more does a female employee cost than a male employee? Let's not hire them. Do you think that cost by race could be determined? I'm sure some racial demographic has higher associated costs than others. Let's not hire them either. How about religious people...they might want additional religious holidays off and might refuse working on weekends. Let's not hire them. Overweight? No way they are getting hired. Older people? That is when most diseases really get going, let's not hire anyone over 35 and get rid of those that hit 40. Gay people? Their health care costs have to be higher let's not hire them. Again to be clear I'm perfectly fine with a company to be able to hire (or not) for any reason they want but companies can't do that because some groups are more equal than others.
Smokers are a target now, but everyone is a target ultimately. So have fun persecuting a group you don't like, but be aware that you are in a group that others don't like and they will be coming for you, probably with the power of government behind them. When this happens you know who is going to have your back? Smokers, climate change deniers, rights wing gun nuts, Tea parties, etc. all the groups that have been demonized, mocked, and denigrated and know what it's like.
I may get banned for self-promoting but maybe not because we are now on the second page and what I have to say is relevant. I have no problem with campaigns against smoking or littering. I do have a problem with the persecution of smokers. I made that a theme in one of my books, “No Smoking? Up Yours— Take Heaven And Stuff It.” It’s like you say. This is a satire on the near-death experience and not for the religious.
I am sure he solved all the world’s problems with his deep thinking aka daydreaming.
Do you know what cognitive dissonance is?
” we would get a lot more done.”
I would like to see a study on how much time, employees waste, texting at their desk when the Boss isn’t around.
We live in an age of made up stats and pseudo science all designed to further the control of we the people by government.
How much more do homo employees cost?
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.
You bring up a very valid point, but you must concede that non-smokers are not afforded that luxury. I personally hate the smell of cigarettes - I can even smell it when someone in the car in front of me is smoking. And my most hated trick is that many will flick their butts out of the car window. Don’t want that sh!t in my car, so I flick it outside and make it someone else’ problem. If you are going to smoke, please do so responsibly.
Very true. Sorry for your loss but happy she made it past 20!
Very well said, Durus. There was a report last week: “Sitting is the New Smoking”. Will they come after the “sitters” now?
From my experience having females in the workplace lowered productivity. They don't even need to smoke to waste time gossiping or dealing with their personal emotional drama.
That's when they decided to show up.
I didn't have to have a policy on not hiring females. I'd hire one thinking "this one seems to have her stuff together," and then they'd invariably fire themselves.
Sometimes you have to draw folks a picture because they lack common sense. So yes, it is necessary.
The air was always full of smoke, but it wasn't all 2nd hand. I consider the smoke coming off the end of a burning cigarette as 1st hand smoke.
When you look at it that way, we ALL smoked, ALL the time, whether we wanted to or not and you didn't dare complain about it. I think it is from that fact, that the smoking nazis come from.
Now you're just being mean.
Tell you what folks, I’d rather have smoke coming out the front end with smokers, than the smoke coming out the other end with these anti-smoking nimrods.
I’m not a smoking advocate, far from it. None the less this is reaching near NAZI status. For heaven’s sake, give it a rest!
In Canada during six months you have storm windows on the outside. You only open slits during the cold months. If someone smokes as did my mother, who lived to 84, all that children were breathing during that period is second-hand smoke. The woman had to be there or the house might burn down or the pipes freeze. My father smoked too as did anyone who came through the door. They used coal furnaces and wood stoves and the car exhaust went straight into the air. Plus you had industries such as pulp mills with no controls. The air on the outside wasn’t much better. Yet the life expectancy kept going up. We’re still here and so are most of the people I grew up with. If we ever found out what really kills everyone no one would ever die.
I was an asthmatic kid, my parents never seemed to figure out that smoke was bad for me. When I left home I stopped having asthma attacks, except when I visited them.
They lived to be 75, hacking and coughing with COPD until the end. No cancer, just stroke and congestive heart failure.
I come from some very long lived people, one made it to 116 years old. I wonder how old my parents would have gotten if they had not smoked.
So do you or don’t you believe cigarettes shorten life span?
One comes from (relative) collective ignorance; the other comes from obnoxious sanctimony.
I know which side I sympathize with.
The statistics say it does. But shorten from what? Life expectancy went up every decade for both sexes in the heaviest smoking century in history, the 20th.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.