Health

Non-Smoking ŠKODA AUTO 

ŠKODA AUTO and the KOVO Trade Union plan to introduce a smoking ban in all areas and operations

A

modern and, above all, healthy company: This is the concept that the carmaker and its social partner, the KOVO Trade Union, have jointly developed to further increase the employer’s social responsibility. This activity includes a wide range of preventive measures to protect employees’ health. The measures applied during the coronavirus pandemic, which include a ban on smoking in all the areas of the carmaker, laid the groundwork for a new idea: to make ŠKODA AUTO a non-smoking company. With this step, the carmaker promises to create an environment that will be friendly to all of its employees, featuring mutual respect and trust. “Our main priority is to protect our employees’ health as much as possible. Our measures against COVID-19 form an excellent basis, and we are now building on it. The next logical step is, therefore, to make ŠKODA AUTO a non-smoking company”, says Maren Gräf, Board Member for Human Resources Management.

ŠKODA AUTO’s management team sees a new standard behind the ban on smoking in the form of a non-smoking company, thanks to which it will join numerous other facilities that are already non-smoking: from restaurants and public transport stops to sports grounds and cultural facilities. The tobacco-free regime has also been adopted by our colleagues at ŠKODA AUTO Volkswagen India Private Limited. ED

What happens when you quit smoking

20 

minutes until your blood pressure and pulse drop back to normal level.

9 

months until the so-called smoker’s cough begins to subside.

1 

year until the risk of one’s cardiovascular disease decreases by 30 percent. 

10 

years until one’s risk of lung, oesophageal, larynx or liver cancer decreases.

Source: National Institute of Public Health

Did you know that...

… with one pack of the cheapest cigarettes smoked every day, the ordinary smoker spends around CZK 2,500 a month? It is CZK 30,000 a year, which represents a nice holiday by the sea for two or a language course for children. If you have been smoking in this way for 30 years, this vice may have cost you as much as CZK 1.7 million! What’s more, if you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, that means smoking will take up around four years of your life.

Thomas Schäfer

Chairman of the Board

With this step, we wish to motivate our employees to have a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle. Our goal is, of course, also to remove any barriers between smokers and non-smokers and reduce the amount of waste that smoking generates. Thus, we will contribute to protecting the environment.

Marek Jancák

Head of PF – Car Production

Our company and its social partner are using considerable resources to protect our employees’ health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this effort was the greatest in our company’s history. It would be indefensible to invest a single Czech crown to support damaging our health – for example, by building and maintaining any smoking areas. Such an approach would certainly be unfair to our non-smoking employees, who do not get any exclusive facilities.

Štěpán Lacina

Head of SP – Human Resources Planning

A number of measures applied during the coronavirus pandemic, which we set up together with the KOVO Trade Union, have worked out so successfully that they have shown us how everything could work in the future. I’m pleased that one of these trends is a non-smoking company, because it is normal not to smoke.