Smoking to be banned at all US Dell campuses

There are smoking tents at Dell. That's where the smokers hang. I think this will lower productivity, honestly. Alot of people are getting layed off and quitting anyway.



I'm in the same line of thinking as Huck, though I smoke. I think it should be left up to the owners.
 
As an ex-smoker, it's funny to think that we used to smoke freely in offices. Hard for younger people to fathom that today. I used to freely smoke cigars in my cubicle. I'm pretty sure the lady in the cubicle next to mine transferred to Alaska to get away from my cigars.
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Hook'em!!!
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I would say that I support their right. The hypocrisy of marketing it as caring for their employees, but it not being a global policy offends me. Either they don't care about their non-US workers or they are lying about their real reasons. And it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see that. I think it offends me even more that they think their employees and customers are stupid.

And while I support their right to do it, I find it an offensive invasion of their employees' personal liberty. It was one thing to offer health programs and services and encourage employees to make use of them. It is quite another to impose a restriction. Definitely their right, but I don't have to agree with it. Not so much that I'll quit, but that doesn't mean I'm not offended by the policy and even more so by the disingenuous marketing of it.
 
Honestly, I'd say only 10 percent of the workforce smokes.


Again, I don't like their decision, but I respect their right to do so.

Private property rights. You don't have to work at Dell or go to a smoking bar. We don't need the govt telling private businesses to ban legal acts and there was never a restriction on non-smoking bars. Some whiners just wanted the govt to level the playing field.
 
Hornius, and I agree. Private property rights. However, let's say Dell is the only place in town and does allow smoking in the building, it would suck to have to put up with it. I think that may be a more valid lawsuit, but I still stand by private property rights.
 
Dell has every right to develop its own smoking policy. Hell, they have the right to ban coffee, sweets, whatever, as long as its applied equally.

I don't like the policy, though. It does blur the lines between work and private life. There are other, more common sense approaches: incentives for quitting, outside smoking areas, etc. I can't imagine it does much for morale for employees who smoke.

As for worker productivity, I wonder how many of you are reading this thread at work.
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I don't know that this is totally a marketing decision as many have said.

I certainly don't see advertisements saying that "Dell is now smoke free (and we offer $399 Celeron processors)." Yes, they released a PR announcement, but I doubt they really expect that to impact their top line.

As someone who has consulted with top execs at Dell both in Round Rock and at their European offices in Dublin, I feel fairly safe in saying that this decision (like most corporate decisions) is a mix of things. Some of those things are financial. Some are probably personal. Some "may" have to do with PR. But, many probably have to do with a genuine concern about their employees' health.

"But, but, but....if they had any concern at all about their employees' health, why wouldn't this be a global initiative?"

Well...I don't know for sure. But, I suspect that there are a couple reasons. First of all, Dell in the US attempts for give regional subs a fair amount of autonomy. Ad campaigns are decided locally (by locally, I mean, by the regional offices). Product decisions are done locally. R&D is done locally. Finance is done locally. In all these ways, Dell US allows the regional offices to make their own decisions. I wouldn't be surprised if they decided that HR issues should also be done locally. Frankly, of all decisions, I would think having HR decisions made locally makes the most sense.

The other thing they "may" have been considering is the differential rates of smoking by geography. Europeans and, especially, Asians have (if memory serves) considerably higher smoking rates than does the US (currently). So, a smoking ban in the US may piss of 10% of your employees and you may lose half of them. In Asia, you may piss off 50% of your employees (estimated number from WHO) and really hurt your organization if half of them leave.

"But, but, but...if this is for PURELY altruistic reasons like Dell says, then shouldn't they be okay hurting their business in order to help their employees?"

Well...maybe in fairlytale land. But, in the real world, you have to make difficult decisions and shareholder value, market share, revenue, etc. are important and have to be considered.

Not all corporate decisionmakers are greedy SOB's trying to keep down the little guy. I'm surprised by some of the posters who (based on other threads) I would have thought would be more understanding of the way businesses make decisions.
 
i wish most building would do this so i could walk by the smoking areas without looking at the chicks that got hit by the ugly stick.....
 
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