Optimizing Smoking Policies and Employee Breaks in ITES Organizations

Hi all,

I hope you all are well. I am working in an ITES organization, handling HR activities. We have over 100 employees, with at least 25 people being smokers. Some of them are seniors who have been working with the company since its establishment. My problem is not their smoking habit but the number of breaks they take for smoking. Smoking is not allowed on the office premises, so people go outside to smoke.

My question is, can we set a fixed number of breaks in a day for smokers? I am waiting for your responses.

Thanks,
Nishu

Hi Neesu,

How big is your campus? Is it an indoor floor? Depending on the infrastructure, talk to management if you can have a "smoking zone" separately inside your campus outside your office premises. Allocate a small area with park-like benches with smoking zone boards. If it's on the floors, allocate a room (like a pantry) designated as a "smoking zone," and people can be asked to use that room exclusively for smoking. Here, you can also do additional innovative work. You can hang wallpapers, signs boards (not the regular ones—I have seen some really creative/humorous wallpapers against smoking that convey the message that smoking is injurious in a funny way, leaving an impression) for "no smoking" and some health tips.

Since it's an ITES, I'm sure there will be definite working hour policies to be followed by employees, for instance, they should show productive 8-and-a-half hours plus a 1-hour break. So, when you finalize the smoking zones or come up with alternative solutions, send out emails/information to all unit heads, indicating that our workplace now provides an alternative solution on smoking for employees while subtly mentioning the working hours.

All that matters to heads is productive hours, so they might welcome this initiative and then cascade it down to their subordinates.

This way, even the heads will keep a check on how long their subordinates take breaks, and at the same time, they will try to set an example.

Kavita's alias "orchids" suggestion is good. [I was wondering Kavita—how come "orchid" for a pseudo-name?] Why not begin with some sort of a framework that she suggests and you can refine it as you go along...depending on the feedback you get? Thank God...I don't have this problem!!!

Rgds, TS

One good smoking policy you can follow is as follows:

http://west-norfolk.gov.uk <link updated to site home>