Smoke-Free Workplace Policies and Organizational Attraction

Abstract

Companies adopt smoke-free workplace policies to improve health of their employees, but how severely such
policies are enforced can have an impact on non-smoking employees as well and can also affect employees' view
about their companies. The current study examined the extent to which perceived severity of and organizational
support for a smoke-free workplace policy affected employees’ attraction toward their organizations. The data
from 621 employees of 20 companies in the U.S. and 27 companies in Korea showed that the extent to which
employees considered a smoke-free policy at their workplace to be enforced severely was negatively related to
organizational attraction (coefficient = –0.22, p = .002) and perceived organizational support was positively
related to organizational attraction (coefficient = 0.41, p< .001). The negative relationship between perceived
severity and organizational attraction, however, became weaker for organizations that had employees with higher
perceptions of organizational support. In contrast to smokers (coefficient = –.05), ex-smokers' perceived severity
of a smoke-free policy was positively related to their organizational attraction (coefficient = .31). These findings
indicated that a smoke-free policy in the workplace can have implications for non-smokers, including
ex-smokers, as well as for smokers.