Nomura Holdings Inc.– A Japanese Brokerage has asked its employees to strictly avoid smoking during their working hours. This is also applicable when they are working from home.
Being one of the leading brokerages, the company takes a valuable step to send memo to all the employees elaborating the latest policy that will be starting its effects from October. Yoshitaka Otsu, the spokesman, said this over the phone. The company is all set to shut the smoking rooms that they have in the Nomura Group by December end.
This is a rule that will be completely settled on mutual trust and will not include any disciplinary clause as Otsu said. The company has no plan to monitor their employees while remote working if they are abiding by the given guidelines.
The measures have been introduced by Nomura to create a good working environment, promote better health of the employees and prevent smoking as mentioned in a different statement made on Wednesday.
What will be the consequences of smoking?
Well, there are no such clauses made yet as per the spokesperson. This is totally built on the basis of mutual trust. This firm has been discouraging their employees from smoking for years and this time they have moved a part of it totally. Even the company has said that if employees can give up smoking, it will help them to improve their productivity.
In the statement made on Wednesday, it said, “There needs to be an environment in which everyone is healthy and can live lively in order for employees to fully demonstrate their ability, characters.”
Check Out : Disaster: New York, New Jersey declares emergency as Hurricane Ida wreaks havoc, causes flash floods.
Remote Work & Smoking:
Nomura has taken the latest action to mitigate the smoking associated health risks and to draw attention of the employees. They have found that 2 out of 10 have mentioned working from home or working at home while the pandemic has increased their dependency on smoking. This was a poll conducted by the National Cancer Center Japan in March. The reasons are partly because no one will stop you from smoking when the employees are at home.
As per Nomura, they are working to reduce the smoking rate of their employees by 12%. Even the firm has been offering financial aid to help their employees quit smoking since the year 2017 as mentioned by Otsu.
Other Companies are Adopting Such Strategies:
In 2018, Snacks manufacturer Calbee Inc. prohibited employees from smoking while they are in the working hours as they understand the importance of a healthy family and employees as imperative for the growth of the company. They mentioned that it is “essential” for the betterment of the company.
Another example is Ajinomoto Co. who is the food producer enabling no smoking while they are working in a policy named “no-smoking-while-working” in 2019. This was applicable for the employees who are working remotely as well.
The telecom unit of SoftBank Group Corp. also introduced something similar in the least year of April to encourage better employee health.
