21/10/2022 - Calling employers in Luton - tobacco survey now live
Why do employee smoking behaviours matter to your business?
When you think about tobacco use in the workplace, your attention most likely focusses on the associated health concerns, including impact of second hand. Employers have a duty of care to protect the Health and Wellbeing of their employees.
In addition to this, tobacco use has a direct impact on employee productivity and performance, which can affect every part of your business.
Some workers average 8 minutes a day per smoke break, but for high tobacco use industries like construction, the average smoking worker took a total of 73 minutes worth of smoking breaks per day.
With more remote workers, smoking and other tobacco use in the workplace today isn’t always obvious. However it remains an important issue. Workplaces offer a potentially effective venue to target support for smokers.
Why are we carrying out this survey?
Whilst smoking prevalence in Luton adults has declined in recent years to 15.3% in 2020, Luton is still in the top 20% highest prevalence across local authorities in England.
In particular, someone in a routine and manual occupation in Luton is 3.3 times more likely to smoke than another occupation, and therefore are a priority group in Luton’s Tobacco Control Strategy 2023 to 28 for targeted action.
Our Public Health team wants to hear from your business, to:
- understand what you currently do to support employee health and wellbeing
- find out what support your business needs to make reducing tobacco use a high priority for your workforce
The survey is live until 30 November and can be accessed here: