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The Dow Chemical Company
A world leader in plastics, chemical and agricultural products, The Dow Chemical Company reports annual sales of $54 billion and has 46,000 employees worldwide. The company delivers its products and services to customers in approximately 160 countries, and specializes in everything from fresh water, food and pharmaceuticals to paints, packaging and personal care products. For more than 10 years, Dow has advocated Responsible Care®, an industry-wide commitment designed to help consumers lead healthier lives.
For this report, Dr. Ashish Mishra, Health Director – India, joined Dena Pflieger, Global Health Services Coordinator, to discuss Dow's innovative tobacco cessation program that is helping employees move toward a healthier lifestyle.
Key Observations
Although they have offered tobacco cessation programs for employees worldwide for more than 20 years, The Dow Chemical Company's more recent efforts have been especially successful in India, where the company employs between 500 and 1,000 workers at any given time. For years, the company had seen an overall 18 percent rate of tobacco use, and in India the percentage ranged from 12 percent to 50 percent, depending on the location.
In 2007, the company implemented the first "Dow No Tobacco Day," a comprehensive program involving more than 30 sites around the world. Employees made a personal commitment to Dow to quit tobacco for the day, and the company's Health Services Department followed up with each employee at one-, three-, six-, and 11-month intervals to see if they remained tobacco-free. Prior to the event, employees received at least one message promoting No Tobacco Day, either through e-mail or Health Notes, an employee newsletter. Some sites came up with creative ways to encourage employees to quit for the day, including closing smoking huts and distributing quit packs containing educational information, coffee stirrers, a stress ball, mints and/or nicotine replacement products. Some even gave cold turkey sandwiches to those who had committed to quit for the day. No Tobacco Day was very well-received by employees, according to Dr. Mishra. Global events generate a great deal of excitement and enthusiasm as people rally around a common cause with their colleagues worldwide. And the company encourages locations to come up with fresh ideas from year to year to keep employee interest high.
In addition to No Tobacco Day, the company also employed an innovative strategy at one location in Lote, India. At that location, Dow officials reached out to the community and secured a partnership with a local cancer hospital. Over the course of one year, four employees from the hospital's preventive oncology department came to the Dow site seven times and met with employees one-on-one over two days. At this particular site, and across India, chewing tobacco was prevalent. In fact, oral cancer is the number-one cancer in the country. There were 106 employees at Lote, and 50 percent of them, many of whom displayed pre-cancerous lesions, chewed tobacco. By the end of the hospital employees' visits, many of those lesions had disappeared in those employees who took advantage of the program. Although the one-on-one counseling services program has ended, employees are welcome to continue counseling through the employee assistance program.
Measuring Success
For five years, the company's worldwide tobacco use rate had plateaued at 18 percent. In 2007, they saw their employees' tobacco use rate drop one percent to 17 percent. In Lote, 25 out of 53 tobacco users had quit after one year of the program, representing a 47 percent success rate.
Employees appreciate the company's efforts and have written testimonials to thank Dow. One employee wrote, "I have been consuming tobacco for the last 30 years but . . . because of Dow's tobacco cessation program I completely quit tobacco." Another stated, "Dow's tobacco cessation program provided the opportunity for everyone at the Lote site to quit tobacco and the program was a complete success . . . Close to 50 percent have already quit and others who have not been so successful in quitting have certainly reduced tobacco consumption. My appreciation to Dow . . . for organizing the tobacco cessation program at Lote."
The Next Generation
The company plans to follow up with former tobacco users quarterly and will extend the program in India to the surrounding community through employees who stopped using tobacco through the Dow program. Next year a different site has been slated to host a similar onsite counseling program.
Going forward, it is expected that those who have quit using tobacco with the assistance of a Dow program will serve as ambassadors, both at their worksites and in their communities. Because these people have gone through the process of quitting, they will have strong credibility when talking to others about the possibility of giving up tobacco. And, being tasked with serving as an ambassador also helps participants refrain from picking up the habit again.
Lessons Learned
There was some initial resistance to the program, which Dr. Mishra says was partially culture-based. Employees argued chewing tobacco is an ancient Indian tradition. Why, they wondered, should they make this lifestyle change? In response, Dow management cited research showing that the Portuguese had actually introduced tobacco to India about 400 years ago — so the practice of tobacco chewing is not actually a part of ancient Indian culture at all. Once employees were made aware of this fact, they could no longer justify tobacco use as a cultural tradition.
The company also worked closely with local union officials to secure the union's full support before beginning the program. Making the counseling sessions voluntary and offering incentives for entire sites, not individuals, were key factors in securing buy-in from union leadership.
According to Dr. Mishra, the key to creating a successful and innovative tobacco cessation program is to stay true to the belief that it is possible to effect change. When Dow implemented one-on-one counseling sessions, the company predicted it would see a 10 percent to 15 percent quit rate — instead, 50 percent of program participants gave up tobacco. Even faced with significant cultural resistance, The Dow Chemical Company proved that it can be done!
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