July 7, 2011
Humana’s Phoenix-based office announced last week that they will no longer be hiring job applicants who test positive for tobacco use. The insurance giant’s ban on hiring smokers isn’t limited to just cigarettes either. That’s all tobacco, people – chewing tobacco, cigars, pipes. You name it.

Humana joins the ranks with The Cleveland Clinic, who stopped hiring smokers in 2007, in addition to a number of other hospitals nationwide. Current Humana employees who smoke will not be required to give up the nicotine habit, however, they will be offered free help to assist them in quitting in addition to reduced medical costs.

Not surprisingly, health and wellness incentives are garnering more and more attention as employers seek to reduce medical spending and improve employee health in the workspace. Some companies are offering financial incentives to reward healthy behaviors while others are offering health incentive programs to help employees achieve their health goals, including smoking cessation, weight loss and risk factor management programs.

Humana chose the Grand Canyon State because Arizona state laws allow employers to require smoking-cessation programs. Arizona also has one of the lowest smoking rates in the nation, coming in at 13.1%. Go us!

As a company that encourages health through our corporate wellness incentive programs, this comes as refreshing news to the folks here at Incentive Logic.

What do you think? Does the carrot-and-stick method work? Can dangling the promise of better health and increased savings- among other perks- really make smokers kick the habit for good?

You tell us.