Whether it’s taking a breather from that huge project or just complaining about it, breaks are sometimes really needed at a workplace. But apart from the usual beverage breaks, smokers take the liberty of going for those extra smoke breaks.
While it may be a few extra minutes for smokers off their desk, obviously the non-smoking group at the office doesn’t enjoy free time as much as the smokers do.
Japanese marketing firm Piala Inc found a solution to strike a balance between the two groups as it provides its non-smoking employees extra six paid leaves every year to compensate for smokers’ cigarette breaks.
This step was taken by the company when a few non-smokers complained that they work for longer hours as compared to their smoker colleagues and it was causing a problem.
After hearing about the complaint, the company’s CEO, Takao Asuka went ahead with the said solution to encourage people in company to quit smoking and mentioned.
I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion.
Since the company is on the 29th floor, smokers have to go all the way to the basement to take that smoke which results in them being out for 5 minutes or more.
This new incentive really worked as 30 out of 120 employees availed the benefits and a lot of the employees left smoking to avail this incentive but something like this still isn’t available in India.
