Public Servant Lifestyle

Over half a million smokers take seven cigarette breaks or more each work day, and 400,000 regularly spend 30 minutes or more on each break, according to new research* carried out by The Benenden Healthcare Society.

The average smoker takes 3.2 cigarette breaks each working day, with each break lasting 9.5 minutes, the research found. This means that Britain’s working population of smokers spend the equivalent of 2.4m hours – or 290,000 working days – on cigarette breaks.

Empty Desks

While these findings may not be that big a surprise to non-smokers - who frequently complain about the time their smoking colleagues are allowed away from their desks, often levaing them covering 'phones - but they may raise an eyebrow or two amongst managers who might not have addded up the true cost to organisations of all those small extra 'breaks'.

Jakki Stubbington of Benenden Healthcare said: “Cigarette breaks are always a bone of contention in any office. Non-smokers feel smokers get away with avoiding work, and this will only confirm their suspicions. Cigarette breaks are a positive thing for non-smokers as they minimise the impact of passive smoking in their working environment, but if smokers are seen to be taking advantage of the breaks they are allowed, they will become deeply unpopular.”

According to the findings smokers in the North take more cigarette breaks than elsewhere in the country, with only 13% taking no cigarette breaks per day. In comparison, 29% in the Midlands and 21% in the South take no breaks.

The news is not all bad for organisations though - with nearly four million members of the UK workforce planning to give up smoking when the outright ban starts in July, according to findings from the same group.

Public Places

According to Benenden Healthcare's findings as many as 39% of British smokers are planning to give up smoking when it is banned in public places in England on 1 July. This amounts to 3.8m smokers trying to give up, out of a national total of an estimated 11.7m addicts – a substantially higher figure than the 2.8m smokers the Government predicted would give up when it announced its intention to introduce a smoking ban, back in February of last year.

According to a detailed breakdown of the findings it is predominantly younger male smokers who will stub out the smoking habit, Benenden research shows. Around 45% of male smokers are planning to give up compared with 30 per cent of women.

A majority of 18-24-year old smokers plan to quit compared with 37% of 25-34-year-olds and only 27% of 55 to 64-year-olds. And the table below shows the picture across the country.

Regional differences are very marked, with two-thirds of smokers in the Yorkshire and Humberside region planning to give up, compared with just one-third in London and the North. In fact, well over twice as many Yorkshire and Humberside smokers are giving up compared with those in the West Midlands or in Wales and the South West, the survey suggests.

Motivate

Interestingly, many smokers in Scotland said the ban coming into effect in England would still motivate them to try to give up – perhaps due to the wider media coverage given to the final part of the UK-wide ban. Scotland’s smoking ban was enforced from March of last year. Wales and Northern Ireland’s ban is starting in April, three months before England’s.

Jakki Stubbington added: “The smoking ban is clearly going to have a substantial effect on people’s smoking habits, and the results of our survey suggest that, over the medium to long term, it will make a major dent in the rates of cancer in the UK. Smokers are using the forthcoming ban as the perfect motivation to finally give up.”

* GfK NOP interviewed a representative sample of 958 adults between 9 and 11 February 2007

More information available in Work Environment