Office productivity goes up in smoke

Bob Dole still may be reflecting on the addictive properties of tobacco, but most others -- smokers and nonsmokers alike -- aren't confused.

Take a look at those who flatten themselves in slivers of shade outside their workplaces, fighting midsummer heat and humidity to take their smoking breaks. Remember their winter counterparts, huddled in doorway hollows, dodging icy winds to nurse their habits.

Anyone observing these workday escapes doesn't need to wonder why a junkie's arm bears tracks. When a body needs a cigarette, it needs it now.

In light of the constant yammering about health risks, foul breath and stained teeth, it begs a rationale for why anyone would start to suck smoke into their lungs. But people do, and the bottom line is that workplace smoking is a major drag -- pun intended -- on productivity.

Because a majority of American workers are employed in places where smoking is banned, smokers are forced to light up in designated smoking areas or leave the building. When they do that, they are not at their work stations. The result is a no-brainer: They are doing less work.

Some work places strictly limit break time for both smokers and nonsmokers. At those job sites, you can make the case that an equal amount of work is done by all. But in offices where break time isn't regulated, it's quite typical to find smokers missing from their desks more often than their nonsmoking co-workers.

Sure, you can also make the case that many nonsmokers waste a phenomenal amount of work time -- chatting on the phone, hiding out in the restroom, bantering at the water fountain. Productivity drains aren't the province of smokers alone.

And you can also quite rightly make the case that no worker prospers in a draconian sweat shop, where activity is rigidly timed and controlled. Some freedom of activity is necessary. But it's apparent that many American workplaces are getting justifiably less tolerant about permitting smoking on the job.

Increasingly, companies are saying smokers need not apply. Others are enforcing tougher restrictions. Motorola is getting national attention for extending a smoking ban at two cellular phone plants into adjacent parking lots and even workers' personal automobiles parked in plant lots.

Civil liberties attorneys justifiably are scratching their heads at that one, but evidence is mounting that employers have no intention of relaxing restrictions. Quit-smoking classes are increasingly being offered at workplaces, scared into action by billions of dollars a year spent on tobacco-related health care costs.

Studies released earlier this year by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the University of Missouri-Columbia both found that workplace smoking bans help people break the habit. It's just too inconvenient to find a time and place to light up.

Copyright 1996
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