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Written by Alex Zhang
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Addressing a Burning Issue in Your Workplace
Last week, I arrived outside the gates of a multinational organisation at which I do Business English training. As I stepped out of the taxi, I pulled my overcoat tight, wrapped my scarf around my face and hurried inside to escape the cold. On my way, I noticed the seemingly obligatory group of employees looking cold and uncomfortable, hunched over to avoid the wind, ‘enjoying' their cigarettes. It was so typical that I barely gave it a second look. Two hours later, on my way out, the situation was the same. The faces may have changed, but the cold, discomfort and nicotine dependence remained. As I wended my way home through the cold Tianjin night, I began thinking that there must be a better way.
Smoking is more common in China than in any other country. According to a report published by the World Health Organisation in May of this year, 320 million Chinese light up on a regular basis. It estimates that currently smoking related illnesses kill approximately 1 million people per year and that this figure could rise to 2.2 million by 2020. These alarming statistics come despite China's ratification, in 2005, of the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is designed to reduce tobacco consumption. Henk Bekedam, the WHO's China representative recently stated that, although China may have taken a symbolic step in the right direction by ratifying the convention, practical measures are still desperately needed. "Now China needs to implement comprehensive measures that will change people's behaviour and lead to fewer people smoking." Every time I leave an organisation and pass a crowd of employees outside puffing away, I cannot help but feel that many organizations are doing the same thing as China as a whole. They are making a bold statement, but are not addressing the situation practically. By shunting employees that smoke off their premises, they are adopting something of a NIMBY approach – Not in My Back Yard. In effect, they are saying that their employees are free to cause themselves potentially fatal damage, as long as they do it off company property. This, to me, seems crazy!
Before we move on, I want to clarify that by no means do I mean that ensuring your site is ‘smoke free' is crazy. Quite the opposite; I believe it is fundamental to employee wellbeing. The Chinese Ministry of Health estimates that 100,000 people die every year from tobacco-related illness caused by passive smoking - that is from simply being in the same room as smokers and inhaling their smoke. A 2005 report published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology estimated that 460 million Chinese regularly inhale second hand smoke. Therefore, it is vital that you ensure your organisation's working environment is smoke-free. However, I believe that simply moving it outside is fundamentally short-sighted. If this is all your organisation is doing to address the problem of smoking, then it is vital you reassess your definition of ‘smoke-free'. Is your organisation truly ‘smoke-free' if your employees are still happily puffing away just a few feet from your door? No. You have a responsibility to promote health awareness amongst everyone within your organisation. Approximately 60% of adult males in China smoke. If the ratio in your organisation is anything like this, your organisation could soon face a health crisis.
In the last issue of Network HR, I discussed the effects and importance of Corporate Social Responsibility. A major facet of CSR is employee protection and safety - organisations with a good CSR ethos make commitments to their employees' well-being. The fight against smoking is a great way for your organization to improve its CSR policies and to highlight its commitment to staff. You clearly do not want any of your employees to be amongst those 1 million smoking fatalities that occur in China every year. I will not rehash my arguments from that article, but I will remind you of the impact that good CSR can have on HR issues within your organisation. Employees are far more likely to remain loyal to a company that makes a commitment to them and shows that it cares. Here, you have the perfect opportunity – you could potentially save their lives.Below, I have highlighted two ways in which you can combine smoking policy with CSR ideas.
Spark education
Smoking kills. That is a sad fact. As I mentioned above, it claims over 1 million Chinese lives every year, and that statistic is growing. This number is frightening, but what scares me even more is that no one in China seems to be screaming about the dangers of smoking from the rooftops. For many years, in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States, packs of cigarettes have carried large warnings that pull no punches - in the UK, a large black label covers almost half of the front of the pack bearing such messages as "SMOKING KILLS". They are so bold that you could not possibly escape them. This year the British Department of Health, following in the footsteps of its counterparts in Canada and Brazil, decided to go even further by placing pictorial warnings on the front of packets. By 2008 labels such as ‘smoking kills' or ‘smoking causes fatal lung cancer' will be accompanied by pictures showing just that. In China, on the other hand, packets carry the small line "smoking damages your health", hidden away on the side of the packet.Education and awareness are improving in China. The WHO's Tobacco framework, which I mentioned earlier, pledges to improve education and eradicate tobacco advertising.
This is all great news. Unfortunately, though, China ratified the convention less than three years ago, whilst tobacco companies have had a strong infrastructure in place for many years to advertise their products. The tobacco industry was, for decades, largely unregulated. It could advertise, sponsor major sporting events, use point of sale material, distribute free-gifts and even offer misleading health information. This all means that it has its hooks deep into millions of people, including many of your employees.With such fearsome obstacles, it will certainly take time to create change on a national level. However, it will be easier for your organisation to affect directly the lives of your employees. Thankfully, there is a plethora of information available on the internet concerning smoking and the related dangers. Your job is to ensure this information gets to your employees. A particularly chilling resource is the WHO website, which can tell you exactly how many Chinese people die from smoking related illnesses such as lung cancer, vascular disease, respiratory disease and other forms of cancer. You could even visit the British Department of Health's homepage to get a look at the chilling pictures that will soon grace packets of cigarettes in Britain.
Stub out the smoking culture
One of the major reasons that smoking is so prevalent in China is that it comes engrained into society. For many, offering a cigarette is as natural as offering a cup of tea. Seemingly, you can smoke anywhere in China: restaurants, bars, taxis, and internet cafes. No-one argues that smoking is unhealthy, unpleasant and should no longer be such a normal part of Chinese life. Again, changing this on a national scale will take time and a massive effort. Thankfully, within your organisation, this may be a little easier and you can have a direct impact. The majority of large organisations in China now forbid smoking on their premises. However, as I mentioned earlier, they must go further. If your organisation is serious about protecting its staff's health, you must show that you consider smoking unacceptable. For instance, one company in TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area) recently announced that their employees could not smoke at the front of the plant where they would be visible to passers-by - the organization was clearly trying to disassociate itself from the bad habit.
You could introduce similar policies. For instance, you need not limit your vigilance to your site. You could create a policy that stipulates your employees cannot smoke any time they represent your organisation at a meeting or conference. Similarly, you could limit smoking when your employees are wearing your company logo.I am well aware that much of this article has made eradicating smoking from your organization and from your workforce sound easy. Unfortunately, this is not the case. According to the WHO, less than 20% of smokers in China quit successfully, which leaves a whopping 80% of smokers who continue all their lives - however long that might be. If quitting smoking were easy, we would not see such an unhealthy balance. Redressing this balance is not going to be easy and the solutions I offer here are just the tip of the iceberg. However, your role as a HR professional is to show your employees that you truly care about their well-being and are prepared to help them with the most serious of health issues.
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