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FOR EXAMPLE, READ HOW $330,000 CAN BE SAVED EASILY!
A higher salary average produces even higher savings. If only one smoker stops smoking permanently, the full amount is $3,319 for the first year. Using an average of ten productive years per x-smoker the total is $33,000 - and that's just for one smoker. A program of the caliber of Solving The Smoking Puzzle TM will generate forty to fifty percent permanent non-smokers. The savings are phenomenal. Imagine ten employees, that's $330,000 saved. Imagine fifty! Compared to the small investment of the stop smoking program, smoking cessation is the best way companies can not only help themselves but also help their employees. It is definitely a win - win situation.
SMOKERS CAUSE CONSIDERABLE DIRECT AND INDIRECT COSTS TO EMPLOYERS:
- Smokers are absent from work 50% more than nonsmokers.
- Smokers are 50% more likely to be hospitalized and have 15% higher disability rates.
- Employees who take four 10-minute smoking breaks a day actually work one month less per year than workers who don't take smoking breaks.1
THE BREAKDOWN
- Absenteeism runs 2.2 more days each year, at a cost of $152 a day;
- Medical-care benefits are used 50 percent more than by nonsmokers, at an annual cost of $320;
- Earnings are lost to the employer because of the smoker's sickness and /or early death at a cost of $320;
- Lost productivity for smoking breaks, etc., is estimated at $2,527;
- Damage or maintenance for smoke pollution costs $1,388.2
- Health insurance: The American Cancer Society reports in the year 2000 that employees who smoke have an average insured payment for health care of $1,145, while nonsmoking employees average $762.3
- Life insurance
- Lost productivity
- Absenteeism
- Recruitment and retraining costs resulting from loss of employees to smoking-related death and disability
- Worker's compensation payments and occupational health awards
- Disability retirements
- Litigation costs
- Illness and discomfort among nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke.4
"Many of the costs of smoking to businesses are still being discovered…recent studies show that turnover rates, accidents, injuries and disciplinary problems among smokers are higher than with nonsmokers."5
One thing that can't be measured is the mental time lost by smokers who are constantly checking to see if it's time for their break and evaluating whether it is okay to go somewhere to have a few puffs. Also there is an uncalculated amount of time that a worker is not able to concentrate on their work because of thinking about smoking - when and where to go. As a non-smoker, that same worker will be happier, less stressed, and more focused on their work.
A BROADER VIEW OF THE SMOKING PROBLEM
- In 2005, smokers cost the United States $157.7 billion in health-related economic costs, according to the U.S. Surgeon General's Office. 6
- In a study of health care utilization of 20,831 employees of a single, large employer, employees who smoked had more hospital admissions per 1,000 (124 vs. 76), had a longer average length of stay (6.47 vs. 5.03 days), and made six more visits to health care facilities per year than nonsmoking employees.7
- A national study based on American Productivity Audit Data of the U.S. workforce found that tobacco use was one of the greatest variables observed when determining worker lost production time - greater than alcohol consumption, family emergencies, age, or education. The study reported that lost production time (LPT) increased in relation to the amount smoked. LPT estimates for workers who reported smoking one pack of cigarettes per day or more was 75% higher than that observed for nonsmoking and ex-smoking workers. In addition, employees who smoked had approximately twice as much lost production time than workers who never smoked - a cost equivalent of roughly $27 billion in productivity losses for employers.8
- The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment estimated that in 1990 lost economic productivity from disability and premature mortality caused by smoking was $47 billion.8
Most smokers desperately want to stop smoking but are even more desperately fearful of failure, or of the expected trauma of losing their crutch. It makes good business sense to do the right thing now to help smokers lead a longer healthier life and at the same time provide the company with substantial savings.
For more information go to SolvingTheSmokingPuzzle.com and purchase the book, "Solving The Smoking Puzzle TM How Best to Help Your Employees Stop Smoking"
FOOTNOTES
1 Center for Health Promotion and Publications. The Dollar (and sense) Benefits of Having a Smoke-Free Workplace. Lansing, Michigan: Michigan Tobacco Control Program; 2000.
2 Facts and Figures, Economic Impact of Smoking In the Workplace, 1994, American Cancer Society 5008.93 Copyright 1993, American Cancer Society.
3 The Cost of Smoking to Business, American Cancer Society,
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_2_1x_The_Cost_of_Smoking_to_Business.asp.
4 The Dollar (and sense) Benefits of Having a Smoke-Free Workplace, Center for Health Promotion and Publications.. Lansing, Michigan: Michigan Tobacco Control Program; 2000.
5 The Cost of Smoking to Business, American Cancer Society, http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_2_1x_The_Cost_of_Smoking_to_Business.asp.
6 States Hit Public Employees With Smoking Surcharge, Workforce Management Research, http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/24/05/67.php?ht=smoking.
8 Ibid.
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