By Park Si-soo
CJ Group has surrendered to its employees’ insatiable addiction to smoking.
The food and beverage-focused conglomerate recently reopened an outdoor smoking zone on the sixth floor of its office building in Dongdaemun, Seoul.
The reopening marked the failure of CJ’s group-wide smoke-free building campaign adopted in July 2012, under which CJ staff were banned from smoking within one kilometer of their buildings.
“We’ve decided to reopen the sixth floor to smoking employees because of repeated complaints from people living or doing business around the Dongdaemun building,” a CJ spokesman said on Sunday. “They complained about CJ employees smoking near their homes or businesses.”
CJ adopted the campaign, believing it will help improve employees’ health, which would lead to higher productivity and job satisfaction.
The company once had “inspectors” patrolling the one-kilometer non-smoking zone during working hours, catching employees and ordering them back to work.
But this did little for the campaign, because inspectors had no right to impose any penalty.
“Simply put, the campaign did little to inspire employees to stop smoking,” a CJ insider said. “It only increased wasted time.
“Before the campaign, employees had a quick cigarette in the smoking lounge and returned to work.
“But after the campaign began, they spent much more time away from work because they had to leave the building. It only increased people’s distraction and lowered productivity.”