| Palm Beach, Fla., March 3, 2006 - Each year, March 12th rolls around and employers are reminded of National Employee's Day - a day where they show appreciation to their employees. One gesture of appreciation is to provide them with more health awareness and prevention benefits that educate and encourage them to live healthier lives, while cutting costs. One of the most valuable benefits being offered by employers are smoking cessation programs and seminars to help reduce tobacco use among their employees, especially as more cities and states are going smoke free in the workplace.
Smoke Free Society offers effective, educational seminars and programs that are designed and targeted to the entire staff – both smokers and nonsmokers – to help create a caring and supportive environment that is more conducive for smokers to quit and to help nonsmokers better understand their roles in helping their co-workers, friends and loved ones quit smoking. Support from co-workers, friends and family is an essential part of successfully quitting and staying smoke free. As a part of its mission to promote the smoke-free workplace and as an incentive to corporations, Smoke Free Society also offers a free, online download of its Proven Stop Smoking Technique the entire month of March and encourages employers to make it accessible to their employees to help them quit smoking.
An employee that smokes costs themselves over $1,500 a year on cigarettes alone and costs their employer more than $9,300 in lost productivity, smoking breaks, excess medical expenditures, liability insurance and other related costs each and every year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), employee tobacco use costs U.S. companies an estimated $167 billion each year in direct medical costs and lost productivity due to morbidity. Smoking costs businesses even more when absenteeism, lost productivity due to smoke breaks and workers’ compensation claims are included – with an overall tobacco-use prevalence of 22.5%, a company of 10,000 employees is incurring an estimated $12,333,200 per year in costs associated with smoking.
“Paying for tobacco use cessation treatments is the single most cost-effective health insurance benefit for adults that can be provided to employees,” according to the office of the U.S. Surgeon General. Research is now showing smoking cessation programs can pay off for businesses in as little as two years.
Companies such as Scotts Miracle-Gro of Columbus, Ohio are incorporating wellness programs to trim its $24 million-per-year healthcare costs. Thirty percent, or nearly 1,600, of Scotts' 5,300 U.S. workers smoke. Scotts has already banned smoking on the job. Next October, workers must stop altogether. If they don't quit, they will no longer have a job at Scotts. Other smaller companies such as Madam’s Organ Restaurant and Bar in Washington, D.C., offer their employees who smoke $1,000 if they can give up cigarettes and stay smoke free for a year. So the trend is shifting from the culture of smoking to nonsmoking.
Smoke Free Society's educational seminars are conducted on or off the employer's premises and the inclusive smoking cessation program incorporates its three-step process of preparation, quitting without use of any substance or drug, and support – with major emphasis on educating the smoker before they begin the process of quitting.
"According to a recent report in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the most successful quitters have had an average of about eight prior unsuccessful attempts,” said Rez Seyedin, founder of Smoke Free Society. “Quitting smoking is hard. I know firsthand, because I am an ex-smoker and I struggled myself for many years and with many tries. But by preparing, educating, supporting and giving the smoker an effective means to quit, as our seminars and plans do, it helps increase the smoker’s understanding of why they smoke, what is involved in quitting and staying smoke free and how important it is for them to quit and save their health and wealth, which helps with changing their mindset – a mindset that is, ‘Yes! I can quit and stay quit!’ ”
Smoke Free Society is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping smokers quit and educating kids not to start. It is currently offering a free download of its Proven Stop Smoking Technique to those who want to quit smoking or help a loved one quit in just 17 days, without the use of any substance or drug. Its Web site is a portal to an array of information on the adverse effects of smoking and the benefits of quitting. Smoke Free Society offers a variety of quit smoking seminars, lectures, plans and programs to help employers educate and encourage their employees to quit smoking for healthier and more productive futures. Visit the Web site at www.SmokeFreeSociety.org today. |
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