Companies Shift Smoking Bans to Smoker Ban

An increasing number of companies are using smoking as a reason to turn away job applicants. Employers argue that such policies increase worker productivity, reduce health care costs, and encourage healthier lifestyles. These policies up the ante on previous, less-effective efforts, such as no-smoking work environments, cessation programs, and higher health care premiums for smokers.

"Tobacco-free hiring" often requires applicants to submit to a urine test for nicotine, and, if hired, violations are cause for termination. The shift from "smoke-free" to "smoker-free" workplaces has prompted sharp debate about employers intruding into employees' private lives and regulating legal behaviors.

Some state courts have upheld the legality of refusing to employ smokers. For example, hospitals in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas, among others, stopped hiring smokers in the past year. Some justified the new policies as ways to reduce health care costs and to advance their institutional missions of promoting personal well-being.

Supporters of these policies note that smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable death. About 20 percent of Americans still smoke, and smokers cost approximately $3,391 per year in lost productivity and additional health care expenses. Opponents argue that such policies are a slippery slope. Successful nonsmoker policies may lead to limits on other legal employee behaviors, like drinking alcohol, eating fast food, and participating in dangerous sports.

Many companies add their own wrinkle to the smoking ban and even forbid nicotine patches. And while most companies apply the rules only to new employees, a few have eventually mandated that existing employees must quit smoking or lose their jobs.

Questions: Managing Emotions While Managing a Smoking Problem

1. ''Today's discrimination against smokers is equivalent to now illegal racial and gender discrimination years ago." Do you agree or disagree? Explain.

2. Assume you are the employee representative on the executive board at your company. You know the VP of HR plans to propose a smoker ban to begin June 1 for all new hires and the following January for all existing employees. However, you've been asked to keep the plans quiet. What would you do and why?

3. Now, assume you have permission to share the information. You know employees' responses are likely to be emotional (some positive and some negative). How would you present the information to them?

4. More generally, under what circumstances do companies have the right to consider and ban legal employee behaviors during the hiring process? Explain.

5. What is your position regarding policy changes (e.g., smoker ban) and applying them to existing employees who were hired under different guidelines? Explain your position.