How quitting smoking makes you super productive: The career benefits of life without tobacco
Smokers get ill more often, age more quickly, and die younger than non-smokers. Besides cutting lives short, tobacco can also hurt your career. I’ve compiled a list of 5 ways in which you may benefit from becoming a non-smoker.
- You’ll become a healthier person, thus a more diligent worker.
Quitting smoking is a massive step a person can take toward regaining health. A person who is less prone to get ill has fewer sick leaves. That makes such a person a valuable employee with more career prospects.
Today, we can often see office workers taking vaping breaks outside. A vaporizer pen is a growing trend among employees. More and more people are switching from cancer sticks to oil vape pen (check it out). Several studies prove that electronic smoking devices are safer than tobacco cigarettes.
Giving up smoking will increase your productivity and cut back on your sick leave. An article published in the journal Tobacco Control reported the results of a 1990 U.S. Office of Technology Assessment study. The researchers tracked the attendance, productivity, and perceptions of ticket sales staff for a major U.S. airline. 100 of the subjects were current smokers, 100 had never smoked, and another 100 had quit. It turned out that smoking workers took on average nearly 3 times more sick leave as non-smokers. It took quitters a year to become on average 5% more productive than current smokers.
- You’ll reckon everyone in your leadership abilities.
When you quit, you add a strong dose of self-discipline – one of the traits that can help out your career. Discipline is necessary for the workplace. It involves focusing on tasks and projects and showing good attendance. Those who occupy management positions expect all of these from subordinates.
It takes a lot of perseverance to break the addictive behavior. And it’s considered that this perseverance transfers over into labor market behavior. Both colleges and bosses start thinking like this: “He/She manages to quit, it’s a sign of a strong will and ambitions.” Saying that you have a set of skills and abilities for a position higher than where you’re at is one thing, demonstrating this is quite another.
- You’ll start earning more.
According to a working paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, smokers earn an average of 17.5% less than their non-smoking colleagues. While it wasn’t a secret that smoking led to lower wages, the mechanism of this relationship was not well-understood. The researchers focused not on differences in productivity that drive the smoking wage gap but analyzed such factors as baseline employer tolerance and the level of education.
The authors of the study, Hotchkiss and Pitts, reported that smoking intensity doesn’t directly correlate with the wage gap. It doesn’t matter whether you smoke 30 or 600 cigarettes a month, you still make yourself a disservice.
A surprising fact is that former smokers earn more money than both current smokers and non-smokers. Melinda Pitts writes that the reason may be “the qualities of persistence, patience and everything else that goes along with being able to quit” that are valued by employers.
- Quitting will make you a better deal maker.
Avoiding smoking is an efficient way to look more professional. At first, we judge our prospective companions by appearance. It’s important to make a good first impression.
What would a non-smoker think about a person with bad breath and a persistent smell of tobacco? Will they like to communicate with him or her again? Of course, no.
Heavy smoking discolors teeth, changes the color of skin, make hair thinner. The smell you can’t kill with perfumes and possible stains of ash complete the picture of unkempt appearance.
An understanding that your breath laced with tobacco irritates an interlocutor can damage your self-confidence, which is not good in a situation when you want to persuade someone to invest in a company you represent.
When it comes to vaping as an alternative to smoking, it won’t threaten your deal. Vape pens are filled with flavored e-liquids, and there’s no combustion in the process. That means the absence of any unpleasant smell and other mentioned hygienic problems. Perhaps, that’s the reason for the rising popularity of an oil vape pen among office workers.
- You’ll be more likely to succeed if you dare to change your career.
According to a Gallup poll released in 2017, only 15% of workers worldwide admit to loving their jobs when surveyed anonymously. It takes courage to change a career path. And if you’re one of those bold people who decided to try it, ditching your smoking habit could brighten your job prospects. And here’s why.
In the U.S, about 80% of the population lives in an area where smoking is banned in most or all public spaces. These bans help to protect workers from second-hand smoke exposure. It may be not too harmful to have a meal in a smoky café, but to work eight-hour shifts in that café is a whole different issue.
Due to the rising costs of health insurance and concerns about productivity (an employee’s smoke breaks cost an employer $3,391 dollars a year), many workplaces go further than simply banning smoking – they are banning smokers. Workplaces institute new rules in their employment contracts.
ABC recently investigated the subject. They found dozens of companies that were advertising roles specifically for non-smokers on job search platform Seek. The categories ranged from office administrators, receptionists, and chefs to gardeners, truck drivers, and roofers.
So, if you smoke, you may run into what you may consider being discrimination. In fact, the chances of getting a job within a year reduce 24% for unemployed smoking job seekers when compared to non-smokers.
You may think that smoking doesn’t affect your job in any way, and all those studies and numbers are just a trick of health official bodies to make people quit. If you want a faithful proof, then quit and see for yourself!
