Being practically perfect, a bit like Mary Poppins, I don't smoke. However, I lovingly accept my smoker friends. In fact, I don't even throw rubbish at them in the street. Unfortunately the Italian Association of Personnel Managers doesn't feel so benevolent and has asked its members to consider slashing smokers' salaries for their cigarette breaks.
The HR body argues that smokers take an average of six ten-minute breaks per day, amounting to five hours' lost working time over a week. This, it says, should be reflected in employees' salaries. It's a cheap pun, but do smokers have a right to be fuming mad?
The issue of time wasting at work is a sensitive subject for many HR professionals. In a feature published on HR Zone last year, Employee e-abuse: a major business concern?, consultant Mike Morrison challenged the use of company time for personal activities: "We are paid to work, not to have leisure time," he argued, expressing a view shared by many people working in HR. Extending this to the smoking debate, should cigarette breaks be labelled as leisure time or is there a genuine business case to support them?
"If you move from emotion to cold logic then it makes sense," argues HR consultant Peter Stanway. "You can choose whether to work a seven or eight hour day!" However, self-confessed 'heavy smoker' Nik Kellingley, a training consultant, is "convinced" that this is downright untrue: "I know for a fact that I am more productive than my colleagues on a day by day basis. I also know for a fact that without cigarettes I would become utterly unproductive whilst I dwelt in misery." So if we all smoked, would businesses see a surge in employees’ efficiency? Is the incoming ban just asking for a crash in productivity?
Nik Kellingley, training consultant
Aside from the issue of whether a regular break makes for a more capable workforce, should smokers be financially penalised when other 'time wasters' go unpunished? "What if you started to deduct pay from people who use the toilet more often than others? Or from people who receive phone calls from children or childminders?" asks HR Zone member Sarah Kitchen. "Or what if you deduct pay from people who regularly have a hangover on a Monday and don't really start until they've had a coffee? Perhaps you could deduct pay from people who form relationships with work colleagues on the basis that they must have spent time getting to know one another at work? The list for a greedy employer could go on and on… but I suspect they would have trouble retaining any talent at all!"
However, is it really "greedy" to expect an employee to work when they’re being paid to do so? Obviously, productivity would plummet if staff were forced to sit in silence so as not to waste time talking, and avoid making tea because of the lost period whilst the kettle's boiling, but does this dystopian scene really justify cigarette breaks – and as many as the smoker likes? As personnel and training manager Pat Lomas points out, being a smoker doesn’t exempt you from toilet breaks or hangovers, and, she asks, "do non-smokers never have a quick chat during the day?"
The solution provided by Lomas's employer, international manufacturing firm Fusion Group, is to offer smokers one 'smoke break' of no more than ten minutes during the morning and a further one in the afternoon. "For this 'privilege' they work an extra 20 minutes per day," she explains. "If I don't want to work the extra time, I can choose not to have the smoke break. This seems fair enough to me."
Sarah Kitchen
However, this doesn't seem 'fair enough' to Kellingley: "As a smoker I resent 'nine to five' non-smokers whingeing about my cigarette breaks when I often start around seven am and work into the evening to get away from the non smoking office staff who don’t seem to be able to be at their desks without nattering away constantly (because they don't get it over with during a smoking break)." There could, in fact, be a strong business argument to support a regular break from the office environment: "A lot of business gets sorted over a cigarette break, it's not just a 'skive' but quite often a productive mini meeting in a less structured environment," he notes. "If your boss or subordinates smoke it’s a chance to have a full and frank discussion of what’s going on without it leaking into the office."
In which case, are non smokers actually losing out to their smoker colleagues, missing out on important company information and suffering from low productivity? Perhaps the issue is whether all employees should be herded away from their desks at regular intervals and given time to discuss business concerns in an informal setting. Smokers feel they have a right to take cigarette breaks but if a non smoker strolled outside for ten minutes throughout the day, questions would be asked. Ultimately, the Italian Association of Personnel Managers makes an interesting point, but proving that smokers are, as a rule, less productive than non smokers would be difficult and could lead to complaints against serial tea makers and anyone else that doesn't look like they are glued to their computer screen.
By Sarah Fletcher
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9 Responses
Whatever happened to common sense?
If employers/employees spent less time making/complaining about rules and more time tolerating each others imperfections the world would be a much more productive place! I’m with Sarah Kitchen (maybe I’m a teensy bit biased) – where does it all end?. I’m all for a smoke free work place and I’ve always hated smoking rooms. Being a smoker has always provided the excuse I needed to get away from the desk for a few minutes and yes – I think everyone should do it if they feel the need! Why shouldn’t the non-smoker take a walk round the block to clear his head? An intelligent employer/manager knows the difference between a skiver and a worker – regardless of their personal habits. The problem is being able to deal with the skiver since they are so well protected by a miriad of complex, politically correct rules. The real answer to this ‘problem’ is a combination of common sense; common courtesy and a workforce that genuinely wants to get the job done unhindered by petty niggles! (I wonder how many people have used paid working time to read this debate?)
No more smoke for the French
Interestingly, if you feel that restrictions on smoking breaks are harsh, consider the current changes to France’s workplaces. Employees will no longer be able to smoke at their desks and many aren’t too happy about it.
Writing in The Times, Charles Bremner reported: “France has survived the start of its semi-ban on smoking, with some grumbling but little conflict. Office workers turned up to find ash-trays removed from their buildings and new défense de fumer signs in their cafeterias.
“Agence France-Presse, the old national news agency, reported on the sorrow of its own heavy-smoking staff as cartloads of metal free-standing ashtrays were hauled out of their headquarters opposite the stock-exchange. At La Défense, the business district with high-rise buildings, workers gathered on the pavement to complain that a cigarette break was costing them over 10 minutes of travel time by lift.”
So if you sympathise with the plight of smokers in England, spare a thought for those in France. How far is too far? How should we decide what is reasonable?
Best,
Sarah Fletcher,
Editor, HR Zone
maybe fair break entitlement/rules works?
Has the Italian Association of Personnel Managers monitoring people’s tea of coffee breaks also? I have to see any hard proof that smokers are taking more breaks as a general rule.
I worked in a call centre where everybody would get the same breaks and get monitored, smokers or not. I also worked in companies where people take responsibility for breaks themselves and are only disciplined if they don’t get their work finished. If someone would take more breaks for whatever reason but get all their work done, fine.
If some people take more breaks than others due to smoking and this causes others to lose productivity as they need to work in a team, I reckon the only thing you can do it cap breaks…but then make it fair and cap them for everybody not just smokers.
I don’t smoke myself and don’t like smoke, am happy it’s banned in the workplace, but this looks like having a go at smokers without clear proof that are indeed less productive.
Smoking during work time
We have had in New Zealand now for a couple of years a smoking ban in the workplace, extended recently to hotels and restaurants etc. At the time all the addicted smokers threw up their hands and predicted loss of efficiency at work and substantial loss of revenue in pubs etc.
None of the doomsday predictions have come true. Smokers have learned to live with a “drag” during the standard breaks at work, with a large number finding the restriction something of a health benefit; while at the locals the smokers go outside every so often while the rest of the patrons enjoy much cleaner surroundings. It would be a suicidal move for any government to now bring back the previous regime. So for all you smokers, have no fear about loss of efficiency/concentration/dedication to the cause etc. as we found the transition relatively painless….and pray for your cricketers!!
Would it really affect talent management?
I doubt restrictions on smoking breaks would have a particularly significant impact upon talent retention or recruitment – of course, it would be annoying for smokers and may affect their morale in the short term, but I don’t think that the UK’s stance on smoking really affects our ability to compete in the international marketplace.
Best,
Sarah Fletcher,
Editor, HR Zone
Errrr this is making it harder to hire the right people..
What’s next… candidates asking for smoking breaks as part of their package? The reality is we need to be competitive in the world market and this is yet another reason why we are not?!?!? if someone wants to smoke then they can within reason. If they over do it and spend their day at the coffee machine or smoking then its down to their line manager to have a word. If we cut salaries we will loss moral and then soon staff. Any one agree?
Please accomodate my personal habits
I agree with Sarah, its a personal habit. I like the occasional drink, can we build a bar for me in the same way that we build a dedicated smoking room to accomodate other’s personal habits?
Stub it out
As a manager and as a fellow employee I strongly object to smoking breaks. It is most frustrating to have to disrupt your own work to answer the phone of someone who is in a “business meeting” outside. Or to be hard at work when your colleague is clearly not. Although some business matters are discussed outside, I would think the bulk of it is sport, TV or gossip related.
I tend to compensate by surfing the net for 5 minutes if I really need a break from what I am doing, but the smokers do that too.
I did work with one very brave colleague who insisted on walking once around the building (the common practice for those who wanted a cigarette) with the smokers, and no one dared tell him that he was not allowed to. I think the idea of adding an extra 20 minutes to the day is a good one, particularly in a situation where the culture is to work a strict 9-5.
The fact that you can’t survive without a cig all day tends to indicate a weakness of character which is not particularly commendable, and in the past I have often wished that I knew about an employee’s smoking habits before I appointed them, to avoid the working day being disrupted.
It seems bizarre that this addiction is pandered to but others are not. I would work much better with a shot of Jack Daniel’s every now and then!
“….doesn’t look like they are glued to their computer screen.”
Several quietly smouldering issues here I think. As a reformed, or really a lapsed smoker of 21 years, I used to be able to smoke at my desk while working. Clearly this is no longer possible so there is a change of conditions of employment. I do not remember ever being asked to agree to that!
Moving away from the HR opinion, on the ground the front-line manager has to respond to people who would like an extra two tea-breaks a day to coincide with their colleagues ciggie breaks.
Individually there are bound to be examples of people who smoke who work harder than people who abstain – and vice versa of course.
This brings us back to the difference between looking like you are working and high performance.
Most of the comments hinge around being at your place of work for the regulation hours. When what is really importnat is what you achieve while you are there.
It is difficult to manage people individually when you have a rule bound culture instead of a performance culture.
Which would you prefer, an employee who works an hour a day but achieves sixteen hours output or someone that produces a fair day’s work for a day’s effort?