The Cost of Time Tracking Employees that Smoke!

Just a few years ago, smoking in the workplace was a common thing. However as anti-smoking legislation comes on-line, and people who chose to smoke must now exit the building or go to special gas proofed smoking rooms, the real-time cost of smoking has gone up considerably. Smoking is more than just a filthy bad habit - smoking is costing your business money, and that's a fact!

New Staff

First, legislation usually means that you cannot discriminate between staff that smoke and those that do not! So when you’re hiring, asking your prospective sales genius if he or she smokes is a no-no.

This means, if they do smoke, popping out of the office for a drag may seem innocent enough, until you start to add up what this means to your business.

The real costs of smoking

The average smoker will burn between 20 and 40 cigarettes a day. Let’s call it 30, half at home, half at work. If we say it takes about 5 minutes for each nicotine fix, then in real terms you are looking at about 75 minutes of work time spent smoking each and every day.

• That’s 6.25 hours a week of work time up in smoke; or if you prefer, a 15% reduction in staff productivity. Can your business afford this?

Do you currently ask your staff to fill in how much time they've spent smoking? Does 15% loss in productivity matter to you? Well it should, because this is a concern to all businesses big or small.

With MetriQ, staff have the ability to track every minute of the day – which means your smokers can smoke in their own – non-billable time – so increasing productivity and adding fairness to others in your organization who don’t puff their lives away.