6 extra days off for non-smoking employees in Japan

CAIRO – 9 November 2017: In an effort to discourage smoking, a Japanese company is granting its non-smoking staff an extra six days holiday per year. The aim is to compensate the time smokers take for cigarette breaks, reported The Independent.

According to The New York Times 35 percent of the employees that work for the marketing firm, Piala, are smokers. The company made this decision after their non-smoking staff complained that they were working more than their fellow smokers, after finding out that each smoking break lasts at least 15 minutes.

A company’s spokesman, Hirotaka Matsushima, explained that due to the location of their office, which is on the 29th floor, it takes the smoker employee at least 10 minutes to go down to a common smoking room in the basement and come back.

This new policy started as a suggestion by one of the company’s non-smoking staff who placed it in the company’s suggestion box last September, which was then approved by the company’s CEO, Takao Asuka.

Piala found that rewarding non-smokers could be a great incentive as the company cannot punish those who do smoke. Since the decision was made; four employees out of 42 smokers have kicked the habit, according to Euro news.

One of the new non-smokers, Shun Shinbaba, told CNNMoney that he used to smoke a pack of cigarettes every two days and that he plans to use these extra holidays to play tennis.
According to the World Health Organization, the percentage of Japanese smoking adults fell below 20 percent this past year, clarifying that Japanese men are three times more likely to smoke than Japanese women.

Smoking has been a part of the Japanese culture to the point that some companies designated rooms for its employees to smoke indoors. After Piala’s new policy, other companies started working on encouraging their employees to make healthier choices.