A cigarette break costs a lot.
How is that possible? Well, assuming an average assumption that a smoker smokes 5 cigarettes during an 8-hour working day and spends about 8 minutes on this activity each time, a simple calculation shows that during 250 working days he smokes 160 hours. When we divide this time into 8-hour working days, we get 20 days! That is, a time close to the total number of days of annual leave.
A cigarette break? Ok, but not too often, because it's a problem for the whole company!
Many people will say that cigarette break time is a moment when employees who do not work together on a daily basis can meet and talk. This is quite an important element, thanks to which employees can catch a moment of relaxation, rest and, let's face it, simply integrate. Leaving aside the aspect of negative impact on health, one could probably agree with these arguments.
Therefore, it may be worthwhile for employers to consider providing employees with alternative forms and opportunities for a short regeneration break during the working day. In addition to what has been enumerated above, we should add further negative aspects of the negative impact of cigarette breaks during work: difficult management of team work, impact on the work atmosphere, company image
Cigarette break and work management. Get to know 3 more aspects:
- Cigarette break and working time management
Employee time management is a key element of effective work organization. Frequent, uncontrolled cigarette breaks can destabilize work management, task scheduling, and execution. Employers and managers need to make extra efforts to balance working and smoking breaks. As a result of work organization disturbed by frequent breaks, it may be necessary to schedule overtime work or employ additional staff in order to complete orders on time.
- Impact on the working atmosphere
Time spent smoking, instead of working, isn't the only problem. Frequent leaving of the workplace forced by the need to smoke another cigarette has a demotivating effect on other employees who do not smoke. They can and have the right to feel that they work more than their smoking colleagues. This can lead to conflicts and a deterioration in the working atmosphere.
- Employees who smoke and the company's image
The negative impact on the company's image is also significant. A group of employees chatting in the haze of cigarette smoke is certainly not a pleasant sight for visitors to the company and probably stings the eyes of the people managing the organization's work.
How a working time system can help
Certainly, it is impossible to introduce a ban on smoking during work, but it is possible to introduce control over the time that employees devote to this purpose.
The benefits of implementation have several additional dimensions in this aspect:
- Non-smoking employees who do not take frequent breaks can be sure that their reliable work will be registered by the system and provide measurable data in the process of settling or rewarding work, and they themselves work on their own account.
- Employees who take cigarette breaks become aware that someone is watching how much time they spend on a smoke break, and this information is recorded in an objective system. This can become a motivating factor to change habits and reduce the amount of cigarettes smoked.
- People who manage the team's work gain a tool that provides objective, transparent information that can be the basis for evaluating the team's work.
Optimize working time and efficiency of your team
