How single-occupancy smoking rooms can reduce unproductive time

Employees can now get their nicotine fix inside their office, close to their workstation.

Smoking at the workplace makes people step out of their office space and move to an open break-out area or a cornered smoking room, if an organisation has one. This requires them to leave their desks and set aside work for a while. Frequent smokers take at least two to three such smoking breaks, sometimes even more, in an average seven to eight-hour workday. These breaks are in addition to the usual lunch break, which in turn, impacts their productive time.

Solving this issue, a Japanese company, Ryonetsu, has come up with a quirky innovation to get people to take shorter and quicker smoking breaks, without leaving their desks for too long. The company has come up with small ventilated smoking rooms/cubicles that can be installed right next to an employee’s desk.

Employees now need not go out anywhere for their nicotine fix as the smoking room for one enables them to smoke inside their office, close to their workstation, without bothering their non-smoking colleagues with the smell or harmful smoke. These rooms are equipped with deodorising air fresheners, filters, and air conditioning, making the smokers’ experience inside as pleasant as possible. Even though these smoking rooms are rather compact, capable of accommodating only a single person at a time, they make for a great way to get people back to work quickly, without having them sacrifice their smoking needs.

According to Ryonetsu, an indoor smoking area has great benefits for the employer. It ensures that employees do not stretch their smoking breaks by chatting to colleagues over a smoke, which is a usual sight at most workplaces. Additionally, having a designated smoking spot right beside their desk means the staff doesn’t have to use up any valuable work time by walking to and from the outside smoking area.