Smoking Shelters at Work: Protect Your Pro-Tobacco Employees 🚬

Smoking shelters at work

To smoke at work, employees will need you to spend significant sums of money building various smoking shelters. Your business will need at least 35 of them dotted in and around your premises to slake the smoking desires of smokers.

Even if you’re a small business, you’ll still need to designate an inordinate amount of your budget towards installing the, aforementioned, smoking shelters (alongside the standard workplace ping-pong tables etc.).

Hence, in this business, we’ll take you through a step-by-step process to ensure you keep your tobacco happy employees under control.

Smoking Shelters and Employment Laws: When Standing in the Rain Smoking is Just Too Much

The Smoking at Work Act 1974 regulated this matter until The Smoking Shelter Equality at Work Act 2010 launched in 2010.

This was due to the various bans on workplace smoking from 2007, one of most disgraceful attacks on human rights since King Henry VIII banned all sports on Christmas Day in 1541 so that people would focus on Christmas itself. For shame!

However, The Smoking Shelter Equality at Work Act 2010 seeks to restore some order so that smokers can continue with their addiction during company time.

Just in a manner that’s socially and professionally acceptable.

Do note, you shouldn’t accommodate employees’ various other addictions. If there are alcoholics or drug addicts in your business, you SHOULD NOT provide them with drinks and drugs shelters to allow them to get drunk/smacked up etc.

Again, smoking is a socially acceptable addiction and it’s good business practice as an employer to accommodate this habit with knackered out shelters for addicts to huddle in whilst puffing away.

The Types of Smoking Shelter You Need For Your Business

There are various types of smoking shelters you can purchase. These include, but aren’t limited to:

Shelters
Shelters with a flat roof
Smoking shed
Heavy duty smoking shelter
Eco smoking shelter
WWII style Blitz shelters (please note, you’ll need some sort of garden for this)
Economy steel smoking perch bench
Outdoor mild steel smoking bench
Rockingham double steel smoking bench
Floor fixed cigarette bin

Smoking shelters cost between £600-£2,200 and we recommend you get high-quality ones. And you’ll need at least 35 of them, so you’re looking at around £77,000 in business budget to accommodate for employee smoking problems.

This money is essential spending for your business, thus preventing precious smoking darling from getting a bit cold whist they cadge a cigarette.

However, you’ll also want to simultaneously run a baffling stop smoking campaign to encourage employees to not smoke themselves to death.

This may seem odd given the huge sums of money you’ve just spent on smoking shelters, but it’s an important box ticking HR exercise that takes minimal effort to make it look like you actually give a toss about your staff (when you really don’t, of course).

Choosing the Ideal Smoking Shelter

The ideal shelter should have:

At least four sides
Plastic protectors across the sides to protect employees from rain, wind, hurricanes, tornadoes, explosions etc.
A roof
Various cigarette bins nearby

The smoking shelter should say to smokers:

“Come hither! This is a wonderful place where thee can smoke without judgement by society and curse the laws stopping you from fagging away in the cosy, warm interiors of the lovely office you just left.“

Run a monthly smoking survey amongst your smoking employees to determine if your shelters are meeting smokers’ expectations.

If they aren’t, demolish the shelters with controlled explosions and bulldozers. Then build a more suitable batch in their place.

How to Choose the Best Floor Fixed Cigarette Bin

Crucial to the success of your smoking shelter policy is choosing various floor fixed cigarette bins. These ensure employees can stub out their fags appropriately, all without spreading catastrophic fires or inadvertently self-immolating.

Do note, these bins are essential. That’s even though they cost over £120 per bin.

Without the bins, smokers will just chuck the remnants of their latest cigarette anywhere they please due to a general sense of mindless arrogance. This can result, in a worst case scenario, your business burning to the ground in a hellish inferno.

However, it can also set fire to company property such as:

Hedges
Grass
Bushes
Trees
Flower patches

If any of your hedges are destroyed due to smokers carelessly tossing ciggy butts everywhere, you can’t hold them liable for crushing retribution if you don’t have smoking shelters installed.

And bins! Thus, you’ll need to purchases at least 130 fixed floor bins to accommodate for this legal requirement.

As an estimate, this should cost your business around £15,000.

Your Business’ Smoking Shelter Policy

Once you have all your smoking shelters and bins installed, you should distribute your smoking policy company-wide. This must establish:

Designated smoking areas
How to use the bins
The consequences of ignoring your rules
- For example you may want to rely on instant dismissal, demotion, pay cuts, or pelting offending employees with rotten eggs
How to use the smoking shelters

Many smokers will arrive at the shelter desperate for a cigarette. As such, they may become confused and fail to understand how to use the shelter you’ve supplied.

Although it’s simply a case of standing under the shelter to smoke, some smokers may:

Clamber on to the roof of the shelter
Attempt to move the shelter to a preferred location (do note, this will be impossible as the shelters are cemented into the ground)
Demolish the shelter in a fit of smoking withdrawal induced rage

To avoid such an outcome, it’s good business practice to provide a demonstration run to all employees so they understand how to use the shelters.

Namely, standing under the thing and puffing away. And in so doing they should remain not drenched by rain and they can also indulge in mindless chitchat and/or business meetings with various colleagues.

For any employees who don’t smoke and miss these meetings due to not having this addiction, you should punish them by giving them an instant pay cut.

Key Takeaways: Smoking Shelters Will Save Your Business From Annihilation

Without smoking shelters your smoking-based employees will leave your business in droves. They’ll be eager to move to businesses that accommodate their gross habit.

As such, you need to install as many as possible to keep your business on the cutting-edge of organisational success. In fact, if you don’t install smoking shelters this is what will happen: