Chinese firms lure staff with clean air

A woman covers her face with on a heavily polluted day in Beijing.

Chinese firms are using the promise of clean office air to attract workers.

It's not only about salaries, promotions and career prospects - many companies in China have found they need to offer cleaner air within their offices to lure and retain staff.

Air quality has deteriorated badly in China's north and east, including in Beijing and Shanghai.

Companies based in those cities are spending tens of thousands of dollars installing air filtration systems and real-time pollution monitoring devices in their offices.

International market research company J.D. Power has installed new clean-air systems at its Beijing and Shanghai offices, an executive said. Auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and British advertising firm WPP Plc are doing the same in their premises.

"If a company is willing to reduce pollution inside, it shows it is responsible and will have good growth," said Shanghai resident Yao Hui, who has decided to leave a Chinese furniture company where she has worked for four months after finding its office had the highest category of pollution on a measurement device she used.

"I'd still have to look for something in marketing, but a clean-air environment is an important factor," said the 24-year-old marketing professional.

The latest business confidence survey by the European Chamber of Commerce reveals staff turnover rates are relatively high for multinationals based in China, and air pollution has been cited as the top challenge in luring and retaining talent among such companies.

A report published this month by realtor Jones Lang LaSalle and indoor solutions firm PureLiving, said 90 per cent of office buildings in Beijing were not achieving substantive reductions in air particulate matter with their current filtration systems.

PureLiving's chief executive Louie Cheng said about a third of Fortune 100 companies his company worked with had started cleaning up office air, most targeting indoor particulate matter.

Property developers such as Kerry Properties and Jiaming Investment Co. Ltd have implemented air system upgrades in hopes better indoor air quality will attract more tenants, and suppliers expect their businesses to jump in 2016.

Beijing has already issued two smog "red alerts", under which cars are taken off roads and schools and factories close, this (northern) winter.

A red alert is triggered when the government believes air quality will surpass a level of 200 on an index that measures pollutants. The US government deems a level of more than 200 to be "very unhealthy".

On Tuesday the US Embassy in Beijing said the index was above 500.

In Shanghai air pollution levels exceeded 300 on the same index this week.

Reuters