According to the most recent studies 68% of smokers have actually reported that they would like to be able to quit smoking but they don't know that effective help is available. As an employer you can provide those smokers with an opportunity to quit smoking through smoking cessation opportunities at work. Currently there are three options that you can choose to enlist to help your employees quit smoking: education and information, facilitated and/or comprehensive.

Here is a brief description about the three different approaches that you can use.

• Education and information - you provide your employees with information to help them quit smoking, this includes self-help materials. But when providing this kind of information you want to look into the pros and cons of each approach before deciding which information you want to give to your employees.
• Facilitated - approach that involves working with outside agencies, such as stop smoking groups, that deliver programs and off-site activities as well as the self-help materials that are needed to aid your employees in quitting
• Comprehensive - rather than offering these programs and activities off-site this approach offers them to your employees at the workplace, including during working hours as needed, such as break times or lunch times.

Here are some reasons as to why you should help your employees to quit smoking.

• By getting your employees to quit smoking you can actually save your business money each year. In fact for each adult employee that you have who smokes you are losing $1,760 in lost production and $1,623 in extra medical expenses. Which we all know is money that could be better spent elsewhere.
• You can make it easier for your employees to follow the strict no smoking policy that you have in effect for your business if you offer them some kind of program or help to quit smoking. Everybody knows that people have to get punished for violating workplace policies, but rather than just coming down on the people who violate the no smoking policy you should also include some kind of help for these people such as referrals to quitting services so that the corrective actions can be more effective in the long run.
• If you offer tobacco cessation treatment to your employees it is actually the single most cost effective health insurance benefit for adults. It has been proven through numerous studies that smokers are more likely, about 2 to 3 times more likely, to quit smoking when they have help instead of trying to do it on their own. But it has also been proven that quitting smoking also can help prevent numerous expensive health problems, including heart disease, stroke, multiple cancers, respiratory diseases, pre-term labor and low birth-weight.

Here are some ways that reducing the number of employees who smoke can actually benefit your business.

• Improves employee health
• Can boost employee morale
• Increases productivity
• Decreases absenteeism, this will also include people who call in sick to take care of a sick child because it has been proven through numerous studies that children who are not exposed to second hand smoke or whose parents are non smokers actually have fewer colds, coughs and ear infections.
• Drastically reduce health care costs, main reason behind this is that there are fewer doctors visits being used by the entire family so the insurance claims are actually lower
• Lowers fire insurance costs because you are not smoking in the building
• Improves the public image of your business and can actually make it more attractive to future employees who don't smoke

Here are some medications that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help your employees quit smoking.

• Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) - this is a medication that contains a low dose of nicotine but it doesn't include all of the other harmful things that you find in tobacco. The purpose of this medication is to help quitters relieve their withdrawal symptoms, but without being as addictive as tobacco. You can buy this type of medication over the counter in pill, gum, or patch form. But you can also get this kind of medication through a prescription in the form of an inhaler or a nasal spray.
• Bupropion SR (Zyban) - this is a nicotine free prescription antidepressant medication that allows quitters to help reduce their withdrawal symptoms. But one thing about this type of drug is that even though it has been approved by the FDA to treat both depression and tobacco cessation some insurance companies will not allow it to be prescribed to people who are trying to quit smoking so before getting the prescription you need to check with your insurance company to see if it is covered.
• Varenicline (CHANTIX) - this is a prescribed nicotine free pill that works in two ways to help people quit smoking. The pill does provide some nicotine effects so that it helps to ease the withdrawal symptoms, but this pill also blocks the effects of nicotine from cigarettes if people do start to resume smoking. But a good thing about this medication is that the treatment is for a 12 week period, but that period can be doubled for people who successfully quit smoking so that they can increase their chances of remaining smoke free.

Here are the key components that are used in programs that have actually been proven to help smokers quit.

• Providing support for the quitting attempt
• If the smoker has no support system you need to encourage them to seek out support from family and friends
• Counseling, this can be individual, group or even telephone counseling. But this is used to inform the smokers about the dangers of smoking and the benefits they will receive from quitting smoking. But this will also teach them problem solving and skill building techniques to help them quit
• Providing self-help materials which can offer the smokers information and exercises to help smokers handle their cravings, manage stress, encourage them to change their daily habits, address any concerns they might have about weight gain, and other factors that smokers might face.
• In certain cases it is necessary to encourage the use of nicotine replacement products or medications so that the smokers attempt at quitting can be successful.

If you don't currently have a smoke free workplace policy here is what you can do to develop that kind of policy.

Step one:

Learn about the various state and local laws and regulations that address smoking. You can get this information from the American Lung Association on their website http://slati.lungusa.org/states.asp or you can order publications by calling (202) 785 - 3355. But when developing your policy you want to make sure that it is in compliance with state and local smoking ordinances.

Step two:

You also need to involve your employees because involving them in any kind of policy change is actually the key to success, but something that you need to be aware of is to make sure that you involve both smokers and non-smokers and if your company is unionized remember that union involvement is absolutely necessary.

Step three:

You also need to give your employee plenty of notice before you put the new policy into effect. The reason for this is that they actually need time to prepare for the change, not to mention they need to have enough time to ask any and all questions that they might have about why the policy is going into effect. They need time to be able to understand why you are changing the policy.

Step four:

Make sure that you are always offering and actively promoting appropriate smoking cessation assistance both before you implement the policy and after you have implemented the policy. What you might actually discover is that many people want to quit smoking but they just aren't sure how to go about it so by aggressively campaign the stop smoking programs and providing your employees with numerous resources that they can use to help stop smoking you are enabling your employees to quit sooner.

Step five:

Offering incentives for your employees to quit smoking is a great way to get more people on board, not to mention that by getting more employees to quit smoking you will also be cutting company health care costs. Some great incentives would be gum for those who replace smoking with gum chewing, cash incentives, recognition in the company newsletter for how many days they have been smoke free, etc.

Step six:

You are going to need to come up with some ways to ensure that your employees are following the policy when you are developing the policy. You are going to want to include in the policy what is going to happen to people who don't follow the new policy and how long they have to start complying with the policy. Then after the initial time period is up you are going to need to enforce the policy strictly and fairly.