Health officials have urged businesses to designate specific rooms for e-cigarette smoking staff to vape in.
Firms have been told to encourage workers to smoke e-cigarettes at work rather than traditional cigarettes by giving them extra breaks.
Advice issued by Public Health England (PHE) states that workers should be given their own vaping room away from smokers because forcing them to go outside would undermine their ability to quit smoking.
E-cigarette users should be given more frequent breaks than cigarette smokers because they deliver a smaller nicotine hit, according to PHE.
They should also not be referred to as smoking or smokers.
PHE national director of health and wellbeing, professor Kevin Fenton said: “The evidence is clear that vaping is much less harmful than smoking and that e-cigarettes are helping many smokers to quit.
“This new framework will encourage organisations to consider both the benefits and the risks when developing their own policies on e-cigarettes.
“Different approaches will be appropriate in different places, but policies should take account of the evidence and clearly distinguish vaping from smoking.”
PHE state that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent safer than cigarettes and they should be made a more convenient option in the workplace.
The guidelines state vaping should only be banned outright in places such as schools where children are present.
The vapour created by e-cigarettes can be harmful to people suffering with asthma and breathing conditions.
Vaping has become the most popular method for quitting smoking, with 2.8m adults in Great Britain using e-cigarettes.
