To decrease costs for your business, a number of your employees and covered dependents must quit using tobacco. This means implementing a strong tobacco-free policy and offering competitive benefits to help your employees quit.

The National Business Group on Health produces toolkits and other guides to help businesses chose health benefits solutions. See "A Purchaser's Guide to Clinical Preventive Services."

See the tobacco-free campus policy from MedCost in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

NC businesses have chosen to include the following policies to facilitate a smooth transition to a tobacco-free campus wide culture:

1. Employees may not use tobacco on paid break time; employees must clock out or receive supervisors permission to leave the grounds.
2. Employees may not use tobacco anywhere on company property, including company vehicles and parking lots.
3. Employees may not trespass, loiter or litter on adjacent properties. Become tobacco-free with surrounding businesses to increase compliance to the policy.
4. Employees must uphold the "employee hygiene standards" and may not have strong odors such as tobacco smoke on them while at work.
5. Go tobacco-free instead of smoke-free. NC has some of the highest rates of spit tobacco usage in the nation. With an increasing number of public places becoming smoke-free, some people are turning to smoke-less tobacco. To help smoke-less tobacco users quit, click here.

Remember that tobacco use is an addiction and employees need strong benefits to help them quit.

1. Reduction of health insurance premium for non tobacco users.
2. Medicine & Counseling double the chances of successfully quitting: Offer counseling & medicines at no-cost or reduced cost to employees and dependents. Counseling by the NC Quitline is free of charge. Find other programs through the NC Good Health Directory.
3. Reward employees who successfully quit tobacco and those who help enforce the policy.
4. Provide support on paid time, and extend benefits to spouses.
5. NC hospitals are national leaders with the tobacco-free campus wide policy. See examples of their signs and benefits at www.healthyhospital.org.

Increase compliance with the following tips:

• Top down corporate support (ie. Manager approaching visitors and people in violation of company property, sending appropriate communication to employees).
• Consider offering 30 minutes/day of paid time to exercise, and having fresh fruit around the office. Research shows that a healthy diet and regular physical activity helps people quit. Join the Prevention 1st Challenge to learn more about worksite policies to increase the health of your employees.
• Constantly promote the materials and benefits you have made available in company newsletters, fliers and at events.
• Visit www.healthyhospital.org to see how NC Hospitals increased compliance to the tobacco-free campus wide policy.

Resources to help employees quit:

• Resource Flyer - a printable handout displaying quitline numbers and websites
• Medicine choices to double my chances of quitting
• Improve your health by quitting (English / Spanish )
• Money you save by quitting (English / Spanish )
• Consumer quitline Flier 1 (why to call and services offered)

Guides to help you create a healthier worksite:

• Make your workplace smoke-free: A decision makers guide from the CDC (pdf ).
• Healthy Employees Create Healthy Businesses will help employers identify current and future health costs and provides tools that assist in purchasing benefits tailored to the health needs of employees in North Carolina.
• Make it your business: Insure a tobacco-free workforce (an employer's toolkit).
• The Preventive Benefits Profile provides Information on NC health insurance benefits for tobacco, nutrition, physical activity, diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, obesity and cancer.