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.

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. This is made easier when you become tobacco-free with surrounding businesses.
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, people are turning to smoke-less tobacco (link to smokeless tobacco news article?).To help smoke-less tobacco users quit, and to see reasons to help them quit, click here.

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

1. Reduction of health insurance premium for non tobacco users
2. Medicines for help in quitting and counseling at no-cost or reduced cost to employees and dependents
3. Rewards to employees who successfully quit tobacco and to those who help with enforcement of the policy.
4. Provide support on paid time, and extend benefits to spouses
5. Corporate support (ie. Manager approaching visitors and people in violation of company property, sending appropriate communication to employees)
6. Research shows that a healthy diet and regular physical activity helps people quit. Consider offering 30 minutes/day of paid time to exercise, and having fresh fruit around the office. Join the Prevention 1st Challenge to learn more about working on physical activity, nutrition and tobacco at the same time.

NC hospitals are national leaders with the tobacco-free campus wide policy. For more information about them and the benefits they offer visit www.healthyhospital.org. People who get counseling and/or medications can double their chances of successfully quitting. Counselors and programs are listed in the NC Good Health Directory and tobacco quitting experts are available through the NC quitline at 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669) every day from 8:00 a.m. to midnight. Constantly promote the materials and benefits you have made available in newspapers, company newsletters, and at events. Reward those who have quit with a special party where they can invite the person who supported them the most through the process.

The Prevention 1st Challenge and the Healthy Hospital Initiative websites contain helpful tools to help your worksite become tobacco-free.

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 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 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 employers toolkit
• The Preventive Benefits Profile provides Information on NC health insurance benefits for tobacco, nutrition, physical activity, diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, obesity and cancer.