At a Japanese firm non smokers are getting six days extra paid leave to make up for smokers’ cigarette breaks – would that be an incentive to help you quit?

At Spabreaks.com there is a spa experience for just about everything, and at many specialised health spas that includes support for smoking cessation. Since the smoking ban came in more than a decade ago, the numbers of smokers have definitely dropped and today fewer than 17% of people smoke according to a 2017 survey.

As a country, we are increasingly aware of our health and wellbeing and in the last two years trends have shown that we are taking more proactive approaches to it as well. We’re more mindful about our physical and mental health, and while social media presents its own wellbeing challenges, health has become pretty cool thanks to its healthy influencers.

However, for all the ways in which we aim to inspire wellbeing at work, good health as a nation and discourage unhealthy habits such as smoking, has Tokyo-based marketing firm Piala Inc. really hit the bullseye of the problem? We all want good health; absolutely, but what we really want is more holiday!

The idea came from the company suggestion box, straight from staff themselves, and when the CEO agreed that it was a good idea, non smokers were given extra time off to compensate for the amount of time smokers took out in the working day.

The Telegraph reported that “resentment among the non-smokers grew because the company’s head office is on the 29th floor of an office block in the Ebisu district of Tokyo. Anyone wanting a cigarette had to go to the basement level, with each smoking break lasting around 15 minutes.”

Takao Asuka, Piala Inc CEO, said: “I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion,” and it seems his idea was working, with four people giving up smoking within the early weeks of the new scheme.

Would incentives encourage you to a healthier lifestyle?

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