Human Resource Blog

Document Employee — Termination for Smoking

We have gone to no smoking at our company. We have employees leaving the property to smoke and not clocking out. Can we fire these individuals for not following company policy? What should we put in our employee handbook?

The employer is absolutely within his or her rights to fire an employee who is on the clock, but away from the premises. In many cases, this would be considered falsification of company documents (time clock records), lying, violation of time clock procedures or misrepresentation. Those items may already be cause for immediate termination under your current employee handbook.

 

Employees may be assuming that since the company is now non-smoking, it’s okay for them to leave the property to get their nicotine fix. In fairness to employees, since this is a new policy, you might want to issue written reprimands before firing the workers.

It might also be prudent to issue a memo to all employees with paychecks, reminding them that there is no smoking on the property, and that being off the property while on the clock (or on unauthorized breaks) is cause for disciplinary action or immediate termination. When you update the employee handbook, it should simply add “Being away from the premises (not on company business) while clocked in” under reasons for immediate dismissal.

This may be a power play. Some employees may be thinking, “Ha! If they won’t let us smoke on the property, we’ll show them! We’ll smoke elsewhere!” You’ll need to firmly remind employees that this is not an option. Realistically, when a company institutes a no smoking policy, they often lose a few employees who are just too addicted to make the switch.