Nearly 50 percent of smokers say they take between three and six smoking breaks per day at work, and more than two-thirds of those who take smoke breaks said they last between five and fifteen minutes, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health.

"While we all intuitively know that smokers taking cigarette breaks cuts into their productivity at work, we learned from this survey that the extent of time lost at work due to smoke breaks could be staggering," says Ron Finch, vice president at the Business Group.

The survey included 508 employers and 510 employees who smoke and explored employers' and employees' understanding and actions on tobacco use, nicotine addiction, and smoking cessation practices

Employers ranked smoking among their top three employee health priorities along with high blood pressure and obesity. Furthermore, eighty-two percent of employers said that they should take steps to help employees quit smoking.

Most employers said that they believe that establishing smoke-free workplaces is the best way to encourage smokers to quit, but the survey found that employees who smoke said that they wish that employers would offer access to smoking cessation benefits to help them quit.

"While employers recognize the value of a smoke-free workplace, many may not know about the benefits of a systematic approach to smoking cessation," says Finch. "Benefit managers and healthcare practitioners treat smoking as an acute problem, instead of the chronic condition that it is. We need to change this perception. In this survey we heard from smokers that they want support through comprehensive smoking cessation benefits."