SK Group headquarters in downtown Seoul (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — Among South Korea’s major conglomerates, SK Group has increased its number of regular workers by the most in the past year compared to the group’s size.
According to an analysis of third quarter reports by industry tracker Infobigs on listed companies affiliated with the country’s 34 conglomerates, SK Group’s listed companies had 46,819 full-time employees as of the end of the third quarter.
The figure rose 8.5 percent, or 3,670 from 43,149 a year ago, helping SK rank first in terms of the increase in permanent positions.
It was found that by its affiliates, SK hynix Inc. saw its regular employee numbers increase by 2,328 employees, or 9 percent; SK Telecom Co. by 524 employees, or 11.4 percent; SK Innovation Co. by 218 employees, or 12.6 percent; and SK Corp. by 213 employees, or 5.7 percent.
Based on the increase in the number of regular employees, SK Group is the second-largest group in South Korea after Samsung Group, which increased its regular employees to 189,911, an increase of 3,816 and 2.1 percent.
SK Group has recently advocated “social value” management under the leadership of chairman Chey Tae-won, measuring and managing social value by group affiliates, and employment is also among the major indicators measuring social value creation.
SK Group also paid 87.15 million won (US$74,858) in average per capita benefits to its employees in the January-March period of this year, the highest among the business groups analyzed.
Following SK Group, S-Oil Corp. paid an average of 83.86 million won, Samsung Group paid 63.37 million won, Hyundai Motor Group paid 61.96 million won, and KT&G Corp. paid 61.3 million won, showing that SK group had relatively higher average wages.
In terms of the average wage gap between men and women, the gap was the smallest at POSCO Co., with female employees earning 43.85 million won in the January-March period, showing that 76.3 percent of the average men’s salary, 57.45 million won, was paid.
Hyundai Motor Group at 73.5 percent, Samsung Group at 73.1 percent, SK Group at 72.7 percent and KT&G at 72.3 percent also showed relatively small gender wage gaps.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
