This composite photo provided by SK Innovation Co. shows the company’s employees doing their jobs at a variety of workspaces.
SEOUL, Feb. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s major conglomerates, known to be on the conservative side of business style compared to startups or IT firms, are stepping up to change their working culture.
Samsung Electronics Co. currently plans to introduce new offices that combine the strengths of working at home and coming in to work, according to industry sources.
These offices will take on a hybrid form that combines the working environment of a home and office, located in various locations.
Hyundai Motor Co. has been setting up ‘H-Work Stations’ throughout the company’s seven office buildings located in Seoul and the greater Seoul area since June of last year to allow employees who used to work at the company’s headquarters in southern Seoul or Namyang R&D center in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province to work closer to home.
SK Group and its subsidiaries are known for operating a variety of flexible work policies, including SK Innovation Co., which introduced a free seating policy in 2019 to allow employees to reserve any seat they’d like to work at before coming into work regardless of their affiliations.
These policies, however, don’t always garner a positive response.
Senior employees, in particular, who are used to sitting at a designated seat and engaging in face-to-face communications, struggle to cope with these policies.
For some departments that cannot afford flexible work policies due to the nature of their work, the expansion of these policies may only be seen as discriminatory.
For employers, setting up hybrid offices and other related infrastructure means more spending.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
