Does your workplace still allow smoking?
Whether the answer is yes or no, your firm has good company.
A recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 53 percent of U.S. workplaces permit employees to light up at least somewhere on company grounds, either inside or outside.
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The survey did not specifically ask whether organizations allowed smoking indoors. Presumably a much smaller percentage would respond in the affirmative.
I mean, when was the last time you were in an office where people were smoking at their desks?
"It could be inside a garage, could be a room that is far away from other employees," Evren Esen, director of survey programs for SHRM, told Bloomberg. "Some companies are definitely allowing it, and permitting it in those designated places."
In fact, there appeared to be a little bit of confusion about the question.
While only 53 percent of respondents said smoking was allowed in the workplace, 58 percent said that their workplace had designated smoking areas.
Only 31 percent said that smoking on company grounds was completely banned, both inside and outside of the building.
Another 9 percent said they had no specific smoking policy.
Workplace smoking trends have been shaped as much by more than a decade of laws passed by states and municipalities barring tobacco use in places of employment.
Most states now bar smoking in restaurants and bars, and about half of the U.S. population lives in a state that bars smoking at all indoor workplaces, reports Bloomberg.
The laws are nowhere near as strict on the use of e-cigarettes yet, but some municipalities and some employers have brought "vaping" under the same framework as traditional cancer sticks.
Roughly half of the HR professionals surveyed by SHRM said their organizations bar vaping in the office.
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