Statue Bee Dutch in action

Image - Chapter 7

Written text

The Court of Auditors

derekenkamer.kro.nl/seizoenen/rekenkamer-2011-01/afleveringen/04-03-2011
(fragment between 21:54 and 25:45 min.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tUYURr4ik
The Court of Auditors (KRO)

Duration fragment: 3:51 min.

Duration of broadcast: 39:40 min. Date of

broadcast: March 4, 2011

- Of course our smokers get 15 minutes longer break twice a day. I don't want to call it policy,
policy in full, but ...

There are workplaces such as this call center where the boss actually calculates everything: the number of calls
per day, the number of sales, but also the costs of a puffing employee.

- I'm Sofie from the Court of Auditors.

- Hello Sofie, John Heis of the Call Today Group.

- Well, if only true madam, right?

- That's a shame.

- How many people do you work with here?

- That varies, but we are currently at about 153 people. About 153?
-
- About yes, I think 80 percent are women now, 20 percent are men. Yes.
-
- So I have a really nice job. And are
- there also many smokers?
- Yes, there are a number of smokers. About 31 percent of our employees by heart.

- Okay.

- So that's hefty.
- About 31 percent?
- Yes, right now yes.
- And do you also measure people's performance?

- We really keep a record of everything, of age, origin, arriving late, woman, man, family situation, the
financial pressure at home, in a divorce situation, single mother, we all take into account because that
way I can also organize the best people and people best judge on their performance. What, what is
striking, is people who smoke about half an hour before they have a break, you can see the performance
curve going down. And for non-smokers, the conversion curve remains the same.

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Statue Bee Dutch in action

- But maybe they just want a sandwich, then you might also work a little less hard?

- Yes, but they will, those smoking people probably will too, so it would have to go down
even further.
- So that adds up to that? That is on top of
- that, yes.
- Yes yes, what is the most effective employee? A
- non-smoking Moroccan woman.
- Really?
- Yes.

- And a Moroccan employee who then smokes, does that lift a bit? I haven't studied that yet.
- A nice challenge. I will do it right away this week.

- Okay.

The smoking employee therefore performs less well if he is hungry for a cigarette. But if there is going to
be smoking, it will of course cost a few cents. An employee who takes an average of 4 times a day, 10
minutes to smoke, spends 3 hours and 20 minutes per week and more than 173 hours per year. At an
hourly rate of 25 euros, this means a loss of 4325 euros per year per smoker. The smoker is therefore
paid a kind of thirteenth month in free time. That is worth a full ashtray.

- You were just talking about those numbers.

- Yes, we also keep job sheets here. At the end of the day, someone has finished working,
someone has been there for seven hours and then we can see how many of those hours
someone has worked, taken a break, went to the toilet, etc.

- And you measure that by when he is logged in and out of his computer and so on? Yes, yes, there are all
- kinds of tools and buttons for that and they have to touch them. We also look at how often people are sick
compared to the non-smoking people. And then we see that smokers are sick on average 1.3 days longer
per year compared to a non-smoking person. And the number of sick reports among smokers is eleven
percent higher than among non-smokers in our company.

- Okay, so when they are sick they are sick longer and they call in sick more often.

- And they report sick more often. Expressed in euros on an annual basis, this costs us 11,750 euros.

- Yes, and then you have something else?

- Purely on return, the smoking employees cost us 29,315 euros per year and I have not even
included the smoking area and the cleaning costs. If you would ban it here ...
-
- Yes Yes.

- Would people leave, really quit their jobs? Yes, i think so.
- Yes.
- Oh I think it's intermission because everyone is going out there now.
- Yes, we have a monitor and keep an eye on everything. And indeed I see them now ready to
go out. So then they start smoking nicely.

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