Japanese Company Gives Extra Vacation Days to Non-Smoking Staff

Smoking has been quite a hot topic lately. Starting from 2019, Malaysia will enforce a smoking ban at all eateries nationwide. In Malaysia, smoking is not as popular as it used to be in the 90s, back when smoking advertisements ruled the airwaves. Japan is experiencing the same situation, though the country remains as one of the world’s largest tobacco markets.

This particular company in Japan has a smoking problem. With smoking deeply ingrained into the company culture, this company took matters into its own hands. After a non-smoking employee filed a complaint about how smoke breaks were affecting productivity, marketing company Piala Inc. made a change to its paid time off policy.

Quit smoking = extra days off

The company awarded non-smoking staff six extra days off every year to make up for the time smokers to for their smoke breaks. Hirotaka Matsushima, a spokesman for Piala Inc., told The Telegraph, “One of our non-smoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems.”

Piala Inc's CEO, Takao Asuka.

After receiving the complaint, the company’s CEO, Takao Asuka, decided to give non-smoking workers time off to compensate. The frequent smoking breaks meant many workers were away from their office up to 15 minutes every day, Matshushima added.

The policy change is meant to encourage staff to quit smoking. Asuka said “I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion.

Smoking in Japan

It was only recently that the percentage of Japanese adults who smoke went below 20%. The World Health Organisation said that Japanese men are three times more likely to smoke than Japanese women.

In Japan, about 130,000 people die of smoking-related diseases each year, and 15,000 more die of secondhand smoke-related conditions.

In early 2018, Tokyo’s governor Yuriko Koike said he planned to impose a smoking ban in public places across city ahead of the 2020 Olympics. It is not easy to curb tobacco use in Japan, as original efforts by Japan’s health ministry to ban indoor smoking in restaurants were canceled after pressures by lobbyists.

However, for Piala Inc., the measure seems to be working. Four out of the organisation’s 42 workers who smoke have already given up the habit. One of the new non-smokers, Shun Shinbaba said he used to smoke a pack of cigarettes every two days, and that he plans to use his extra days off to play tennis.

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