Where there’s smoke … there’s help

As a self-professed social smoker – meaning I won’t say no if you offer me a cigarette, but I won’t buy a pack – I have to admit, no one, bar my mum, has ever rallied for me to stop smoking for health reasons. So I wasn’t expecting companies to step up to the concerned parents’ role and encourage employees to quit the nasty habit.

Since technically they aren’t contractually obliged to go beyond their employer duties, there is no reason why HR practitioners should put themselves out there for the abuse or displeasure that might arise from employees who think it’s their right to smoke because it’s a personal life choice.

Turns out, there are many issues besides health that companies are concerned with. If you have smokers among your colleagues, you will notice their disappearance every hour or so for five minutes or perhaps longer if they go in a group.

Indeed, the rise in healthcare costs and the banning of smoking in public places, together with the need for higher workplace productivity, have hardened a few employers’ resolve in helping employees banish the cancer sticks forever. See our “No More Butts” feature (page 24) for more insight.

Just as it’s important to keep work productivity levels up, as endorsed by our government, so is the need for companies to plan for the future.

Away from the corporate gloss of a healthy bottom line and good employer branding and whatnot, figuring out what will continue driving your organisation, even when you’re long gone, is what’s on top of senior leaders’ minds.

Organisational development, it seems, will be the catalyst for a business to kick-start a change-management process in its search for the next level of competitive efficiency. Big words? Hardly. It’s going to be a new way of working life in the next five years, according to three senior HR practitioners in our cover story, “All Geared Up” (page 16).

In other news, talent management issues are no different to what they were a year ago when we were in the midst of pulling everyone’s spirits up from the economic recession: better boss-employee relationships, better workplace communication, better leadership skills, better career development programmes and better corporate cultures, along with the war to secure better talent.

Whether you’re an HR practitioner, a managing director, a business leader, the CEO of an SME or MNC, the future belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

Likewise, in my first issue as editor, I hope to bring you an even better quality edition of Human Resources, now in its sixth year.

“Organisational development, it seems, will be the catalyst for an organisation to kickstart a change-management process in its search for the next level of competitive efficiency.”