Can I tell my employees not to smoke?
Thirty states and the District of Columbia have enacted “lifestyle statutes,” which are designed to discourage employers from discriminating against an employee or job applicant based on the person’s behavior when he is off the clock, writes FSB’s Anne Fisher in the April 10 Ask FSB column. Do you think employers have a say in employee behavior outside of work if it affects health costs? Have you encouraged your employees not to smoke?
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DiggThe Author has failed to answer the question: Can I tell my employees not to smoke? Well, NO, you can’t force your employees to stop smoking, as much as you can force them to stop eating or drinking or driving a car. All you can do is make them pay the difference in the insurance premiums. The Owner, based on their question, will not qualify for the discount, if all employees are required to be non-smokers. This seems odd that the insurer would require ALL employees to be non-smokers in order to provide this discount. Just pass the cost onto your employees. In this economy they probably won’t leave their job anyways.
My previous employer had put in a no smoking policy. But honestly, it was laughed at for the longest time. They said it would be put in place in the future, and when they put it in place, 2 of the 3 HR reps wouldn’t enforce it, since they were smokers themselves. And even if though 2nd and 3rd shifters would smoke outside against policy and a former HR person would see them smoking as she left, she said there was nothing she could do since she wasn’t on the clock.
So… if you’re going to put a policy like this in place, make sure that you enforce it and that your management also enforces it. Otherwise, it really looks stupid to have a policy on the books and then see a ton of people blatantly breaking it.
The model of employer-based health care is no longer viable, especially in a country with such a large number of self-employed persons. There needs to be an alternative. As for rights … insurance is about risk, not rights. Insurers have different rates for different risks, and those rate variations should be passed on to the risk taker. So, smokers should pay more. If the health insurance company can ask the question and alter the rates based on the answer, then the insured can ante up. Privacy rights are not a blanket of privacy for any transaction. Auto insurers charge more for habitual speeders. Life insurers charge more for habitual drinkers. Home insurers charge more for wood roofs. Health insurers charge more for smokers. So, I fail to understand why paying for the risks you elect to take on is a problem. Smoking is an “elective” just like drinking, speeding, etc. Pay to play. Your right to privacy ends when you elect to purchase any of those insurance products. You have to right to not be insured and keep your life choices private. This is America, not Utopia.
Devin Blake is an entertainment writer for people magazine and referred me to this article..very interesting…..Sara Hornsby
I am a business owner. Tobacco is legal. I suggest that those who want to ban workers from smoking add up the revenue and taxes paid by smokers. Let the states deduct that amount from their coffers and then tell the non-smokers to make up for it. You will hear some awful crying going on.
As a CEO, I think it is inappropriate and violation of employees’ civil rights for me to get involved in what they do after work. Smoking is just one behavior that adds risk to a person’s life. Do I have the right to tell my staff they cannot go mountain climbing? Can I tell them they cannot work here if they are private pilots?
The real issue is not the behavior of the employee. It is the broken, employer-paid health care system. Only when the United States government reins in lawyers with tort reform and figures out a better equation for health care will the problem end. In the meantime, I will continue to pay most of the full cost of insurance for my employees and their families. That is the right thing to do until something better comes along.
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This line of reasoning takes you down a slippery slope. What’s next? Hypertension, high chloresterol, diabetes and pregnancy are all health risk factors. Races have different incidences of different diseases. Where do you want to draw the line? People tend to want to draw the line where they end up on the good side of it.