LAUSR

For many years Poland has been undertaking initiatives aimed at reducing the problem of smoking among citizens. Many educational and legislative activities have been carried out. One of them was introduction of smoking ban in workplaces and other public places in 2010. The aim of the was to look for attitudes of Polish employers towards smoking and e-cigarette use in workplaces. The cross-sectional survey was carried out on representative group of 2,501 employers from Poland in July/August 2018. Respondents answered to the original questionnaire with help of Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) method. Questionnaire consisted of 19 questions regarding attitudes towards smoking and e-cigarettes use in their workplaces. Data were analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis methods. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Only 44.9% employers agree they should not take care for creation conditions for smoking tobacco/e-cigarettes use during working hours. The majority of respondents (53.7%) believe that non-smokers (without going out to smoke) have fewer breaks in their work. In addition, 51.8% of respondents believe that smoking tobacco/e-cigarettes by employees brings economic losses to the company, and 55.0% think that smoking tobacco/e-cigarettes use during work spoils the company’s image. At the same time, as many as 88.5% of respondents indicated that their workplaces did not carry out activities encouraging them to quit in the last two years and 52.8% do not believe in their effectiveness. Although respondents indicated the negative consequences for their companies because of tobacco smoking/e-cigarettes use by employees, the majority of employers do not take actions to reduce this problem. As big part of them sees also economical and image problems they should be supported in their activity to reduce the tobacco/e-cigarette use among employees. Employers see economical and image problems cause by smoking/e-cigarette using employees. Employers should be supported by public health professionals as they do not believe nor undertake effective activities to reduce tobacco smoking/e-cigarettes use.