Saturday, November 27, 2010
Way to Increase Labor Efficiency
When we looked at the Solow model in chapter 8, we talked about the importance of increases in labor efficiency to growth. We added the variable E to account for labor efficiency and talked about the need to increase the quality of labor through human capital. One way to increase human capital is to decrease the prevalence of smoking among workers. According to the study posted, smokers were correlated with lower productivity and higher absenteeism than nonsmokers and former smokers due to higher rates of sickness and the need to take smoke breaks. This is one reason why employers are increasingly hiring nonsmokers and creating smoke-free workplaces.
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This was very interesting to read and has data that supports current smokers with lower productivity. In the bar graph, the former smokers all had higher efficiency and productivity than any current smoker.
ReplyDeleteConsidering absenteeism, former smokers experienced a decrease in 0.1 absenteeism days and 0.017 attendance interruptions for every year of smoking cessation. The year before, former smokers experienced significant decreases of 0.15 absenteeism days and 0.045 attendance interruptions for each year since cessation.
This is an interesting article and I by in large agree with its claims. The one thing to be taken into consideration though are short term losses in morale and group/company affiliation that could take place if smoking cessation were actively promoted or 'non smoker' hiring were adopted in some parts of the world with traditionally high levels of smokers, such as China.
ReplyDeleteSuch a corporate strategy may at least in the short run adversely affect existing worker efficiency and may lead to more workforce and communal disruptions than theorized in the article and is a situation that many companies in developing countries where smoking rates are higher may not currently be willing to accept.
In today's global economy worker efficiency allows for any country to remain competitive. As a country gets more and more developed, lets say the United States is becomes very important that they have an extremely productive workforce that will be able to work a level that can justify a higher wage. It would make sense for companies take action to lower smoking rates if this would be a great increase productivity allowing them to have increased profits and raise wages. The real question will be if the program to lower smoking rates will make up enough money to justify its cost.
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