What does a smoking employee cost the company?

[MillCreek]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/04/188631885/that-employee-who-smokes-costs-the-boss-5-800-a-year?ft=1&f=1001

In healthcare, it is becoming more and more popular to not hire smokers.  I have heard of some hospitals adding a cotinine test to the standard pre-employment drug screen, to see if the applicant is telling the truth about not being a smoker.

[AZRedhawk44]

The cotinine tests are easy to "beat" though.

Takes 2-3 days of not smoking to eliminate most of the nicotine/cotinine metabolizing process.  And the test probably wouldn't pick up on a quarter-pack-a-day smoker who didn't lay off for a couple days before the test anyways.

Half-pack a day or higher smokers are easy to tell just by smell, fingernails, their facial skin tone, their eyes.

The cotinine tests have a really high threshold so that they don't run into false-positives and lose their marketability after a trial where an employee sues his employer over a false reading on a test.  Can't have folks failing because they hung out at the bar last night and smokers were there, but the employee didn't partake.

Largely a cash-cow for two groups:
1. The test makers.
2. Insurance companies, for situations where a smoker can be charged more for health insurance than a non-smoker.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

hair tests   hard to beat

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[Tallpine]

hair tests   hard to beat

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You haven't met MillCreek 

[zxcvbob]

COST the company?  Smokers *save* the company money by dying sooner -- they don't collect all their pension.

[zahc]

At my current company, which is large enough to be self-insured, smoking costs the employee $30 per month, which is an absurd amount.

[41magsnub]

COST the company?  Smokers *save* the company money by dying sooner -- they don't collect all their pension.

What is this "pension" of which you speak?

[lupinus]

At my current company, which is large enough to be self-insured, smoking costs the employee $30 per month, which is an absurd amount.

At my company it costs the employee roughly 30 a paycheck, exact amount depending on the plan and Single, Family, etc. And IIRC, the price jump is if any family member on the plan is a smoker.

We get paid biweekly.

[Nick1911]

My company is self-insured as well - a cotinine test is required when you first join the insurance plan.  We have more insanity then that though - each year we have a blood draw, if you show any high risk signs [BMI, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides, a few others], your insurance premiums go up.  My BMI is always a point or two over, so I routinely get nicked for that.

A few years ago, the company also banned smoking on any corporate owned property, including inside personal owned vehicles.  Smokers now often congregate at a nearby parking lot of a bank that went out of business.

[lee n. field]

COST the company?  Smokers *save* the company money by dying sooner -- they don't collect all their pension.

All what pension?

[Waitone]

Next up alcohol use
Followed by obesity standards
Etc.

<flight of fancy>The solution is to end tax exempt status for employer sponsored healthcare benefits.  Make healthcare insurance no different than automobile insurance.</flight of fancy>

 

[zxcvbob]

What is this "pension" of which you speak?

That's money that the old guys and the state employees get when they retire.  By the time we retire, it'll just be state employees.

[Nick1911]

That's money that the old guys and the state employees get when they retire.  By the time we retire, it'll just be state employees.

Hey, look on the bright side; maybe by that time we'll all be state employees. 

[MechAg94]

So $5800 a year is maybe 3 to 6% depending pay and benefits.  If you have an employee who gets the job done, that is chicken feed.  Sounds like some BS HR decision for upper management types who look at employees as a bunch of numbered robots.  I can almost see some of our HR "professionals" liking this. 

A good operator or I/E Tech probably saves us more than that each time they prevent a shutdown or fix a problem.  Of course, I think hourly plant workers who don't smoke are likely in the minority down here.  Maybe it is 50/50.

[makattak]

That's money that the old guys and the state employees get when they retire.  By the time we retire, it'll just be state employees.

I have a pension. Of course,  I'm no longer adding to it and anyone hired a month and a half after me didn't get it, but, hey, 35 year old with a pension! (I'm not really expecting it to be there in 30 years)

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[Fly320s]

What does smoking an employee cost the company?

What a difference a small change makes.

[ArfinGreebly]

I'm not a smoker.  Never have been.  (Or, said differently, I quit when I was nineteen, on the very day I started.)

I've worked with smokers, lots of them, and I would say that on balance they were generally the more focused, productive, no nonsense programmers.  Many of them were the mainstay of the software division, and their loss would have been severely injurious to the development effort.

I don't know why.  I have no data that properly correlates and accounts for this seeming coincidence.

Yes, I've worked with a few who were simply slovenly puffers, having no extra merit to offer, but more of them have been kick-butt producers and worth whatever it cost to keep them.

Me, I'm just your average "genius-class" software geek who solves problems and writes code that works.  In those places where we had that smoker-as-rock-star personality, I vainly struggled to keep pace with the output of stained-finger guys who made us mere geniuses look like pikers.

IQ?  Nah.  They usually tested out pretty much where the rest of us were, somewhere above 120, but they had this "something extra" that gave, what?, insight?, clarity?, I dunno.  And they smoked.

I would hesitate to postulate that nicotine had anything to do with their code cutting abilities, but there would seem to be some condition common to both the exceptional coding and the inclination to be chimneys.

So, in the cases I reference above, the cost to the company was negligible alongside the value to the company.

Nothing in the above ramblings should be mistaken for science.

[Monkeyleg]

I'm not a smoker.  Never have been.  (Or, said differently, I quit when I was nineteen, on the very day I started.)

I've worked with smokers, lots of them, and I would say that on balance they were generally the more focused, productive, no nonsense programmers.  Many of them were the mainstay of the software division, and their loss would have been severely injurious to the development effort.

I don't know why.  I have no data that properly correlates and accounts for this seeming coincidence.

Yes, I've worked with a few who were simply slovenly puffers, having no extra merit to offer, but more of them have been kick-butt producers and worth whatever it cost to keep them.

Me, I'm just your average "genius-class" software geek who solves problems and writes code that works.  In those places where we had that smoker-as-rock-star personality, I vainly struggled to keep pace with the output of stained-finger guys who made us mere geniuses look like pikers.

IQ?  Nah.  They usually tested out pretty much where the rest of us were, somewhere above 120, but they had this "something extra" that gave, what?, insight?, clarity?, I dunno.  And they smoked.

I would hesitate to postulate that nicotine had anything to do with their code cutting abilities, but there would seem to be some condition common to both the exceptional coding and the inclination to be chimneys.

So, in the cases I reference above, the cost to the company was negligible alongside the value to the company.

Nothing in the above ramblings should be mistaken for science.

There was a study done back in the 1980's that found that smokers in general were more productive. I smoked because I was very hyper, so any correlation the study found may have been reverse.

[Northwoods]

I have a pension. Of course,  I'm no longer adding to it and anyone hired a month and a half after me didn't get it, but, hey, 35 year old with a pension! (I'm not really expecting it to be there in 30 years)

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If I can keep my career ADD in check for another 1.75 years I'll vest in the pension they offer at PACCAR.  It's not huge, but you get basically 1% of your average 5 highest paid years for each year of service, up to 35 years service.  Assuming I actually stay that long, I'l have 32 years in by the time I'm 65.

Oh, and they do charge something extra to smokers for health insurance.  Not sure how much though.

[MicroBalrog]

<flight of fancy>The solution is to end tax exempt status for employer sponsored healthcare benefits.  Make healthcare insurance no different than automobile insurance.</flight of fancy>

 

And this is why I oppose all tax-exempt statuses or 'tax cuts' for anyone.

This why.

[Tallpine]

What's the next step? 

Charge extra and/or refuse to hire people because they:

drink large soft drinks
eat meat
own and shoot guns
drive a car that gets less than 30 mpg

....

 

[SteveS]

What's the next step? 

Charge extra and/or refuse to hire people because they:

drink large soft drinks
eat meat
own and shoot guns
drive a car that gets less than 30 mpg

....

 

I doubt it, unless it can be shown that these things cost the company money.  If it turns out that the average smoker costs a company thousands of dollars per smoker throughout the year, then I can't say that I am surprised that they would prefer to hire non-smokers.

[Tallpine]

I doubt it, unless it can be shown that these things cost the company money.  If it turns out that the average smoker costs a company thousands of dollars per smoker throughout the year, then I can't say that I am surprised that they would prefer to hire non-smokers.

I'm having a hard time seeing how that cost differential can be true, unless smokers are taking extra breaks for smoking.  In that case, they need to address it as a performance issue.

BTW, I hate smoking 

[MechAg94]

I doubt it, unless it can be shown that these things cost the company money.  If it turns out that the average smoker costs a company thousands of dollars per smoker throughout the year, then I can't say that I am surprised that they would prefer to hire non-smokers.

But that is only part of the equation.  What is the "value added' by that employee?  An effective employee should be providing value that far exceeds their pay/benefits.  An effective employee should be providing value that makes that extra cost meaningless.  If they are not effective, then there are other issues than smoking (performance, leadership, or regulations).

There are any number of things that affect employee health costs.  What if companies start asking for medical history and looking for dangerous hobbies?  There is a lot more in this than just smoking.  To me it is just a case of using an unpopular activity to erode privacy.  

[Brad Johnson]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/04/188631885/that-employee-who-smokes-costs-the-boss-5-800-a-year?ft=1&f=1001

 I have heard of some hospitals adding a cotinine test to the standard pre-employment drug screen, to see if the applicant is telling the truth about not being a smoker.

Given the rise of people who've completely quit cigs by going to vaping, I can't see the cotinine test as a reliable way to screen for "smokers".  Smalls like a lawsuit in the making.

Brad