A Tokyo-based company is rewarding its nonsmoking employees with six extra days of vacation.
It started when an employee at Piala Inc., a marketing firm in Tokyo’s Ebisu district, lodged a complaint.
“One of our nonsmoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems”, Hirotaka Matsushma, a representative for Piala Inc.
, told The Telegraph. “Our CEO saw the comment and agreed, so we are giving non-smokers some extra time off to compensate.”Piala is located on the 29th floor of its building, so each smoke break takes at least 15 minutes.
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“I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion,” said Takao Asuka, CEO of Piala Inc., to Kyodo News.
It seems to be working. So far, at least four employees have quit smoking since Asuka began offering the vacation time, and at least 30 of the nonsmoking employees have already taken advantage of the extra time off, according to Matsushma.
Offering incentives seems to be an effective solution for smoking cessation. In a multitude of studies, participants who were presented with financial incentives tended to quit smoking and stay smoke-free more than those in control groups.
However, it’s unclear whether those results would translate directly to Japan where…
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