TOKYO — A marketing company in Japan offers its non-smoking employees an extra six days of paid holiday a year to compensate for the regular breaks its smokers take.

Piala Inc., based in Tokyo, introduced the perk in September and it has proved popular among staff.

“One of our non-smoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems,” Hirotaka Matsushima, a spokesman for the company told The Telegraph.