Just through the ban some four billion fewer cigarettes have since been sold in the UK, (a fall of about 5.5%) and approximately 400,000 people have quit the habit for good. Business has benefited - non-smokers take around 1.77 fewer days off sick a year, saving £1 billion - and so has society: since the ban was introduced there has already been a 2% fall in heart attacks, while lung cancer is predicted to drop by a fifth in the next 20 years.
But there is only so much this 'free' legislation can achieve. For employee health and wellbeing to continue to improve, money needs to be spent on it, and right now, there is no denying that championing this is a tough call.
For despite all the evidence pointing to the reduction in illness and absence that health and wellbeing initiatives can bring, the economic situation is forcing many companies to re-evaluate what is important to them. The cost of providing health benefits to employees increased by 4% in 2008 (on top of a 5% rise in 2007), and some might see this as a cost too big to bear.
But as this supplement intends to show, those companies that bite the bullet and make health a priority, are seeing real ROI as well as being sure in their minds that it is the right thing to do.
No one is saying it is easy. In our first feature, at least one HR chief wonders if the profession should debate what a wellbeing policy actually is, and whether simply giving staff more control over their jobs yields far more return than any healthy eating campaign will ever achieve. Is health a gender issue? We debate this on p41 but we also speak to leaders in this space, including Unilever, which believes improving employee health is a real productivity and engagement winner.
But in these difficult economic times, surely the only question businesses need to ask themselves is whether they can afford 'not' to have a wellbeing policy.
