An extra week off for non-smokers

According to the latest report from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, people smoke on average in Italy 11.5 cigarettes a day. Considering a cigarette break takes between 8 and 10 minutes, the time dedicated to smoking, in a day, is around an hour and a half and even more. Do the math, Health Italya private company in the supplementary health sector, then decided to reward those who don’t smoke and who basically don’t “waste” that time: in fact, they, who are 90 out of 135 employees, give a week of holidays more.

«We want to encourage smokers to stop because smoking, even passive smoking, has a significantly negative impact on health and the body. For us, sustainability is a concrete activity embedded in the corporate strategy and our commitment in the field of health, prevention and welfare services has also led us internally to implement a series of initiatives, within which this last, in full respect of the values ​​of sustainable development», he says Livia Leafmanaging director of Health Italia.

The initiative aims to promote the health of its employees by also encouraging smokers to give up a harmful habit: the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified 27 smoking-related diseases, including chronic lung disease obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, vascular disease, lung cancer and other forms of cancer. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 8 million deaths are caused by tobacco consumption every year in the world, to which are added 1.2 million due to exposure to secondhand smoke.

Fighting smoking thus becomes an urgency, especially since in 2022, after a long period of stagnation, there has been an increase in smokers of both sexes.

Could having an extra week off be a deterrent?