Yuhan-Kimberly, the country’s leading producers of tissue and personal care products, continues to evolve its flexible work culture in order to enhance productivity and competitiveness.
The company has adopted what it calls a “Smart Work” approach since 2011, offering its employees the freedom to choose their working time and locations with the responsibility to meet business needs.
“A growing number of enterprises have started realizing the necessity of new ways of working in order to proactively deal with the fast-changing society and to respond to the demands for work-life balance,” a Yuhan-Kimberly spokesman said.
According to the firm, the number of staff members who don’t start work at 9 a.m. accounts for 15.5 percent of total employees.
They don’t have a permanent desk, but choose a work setting, from quieter rooms to open space lounge, appropriate to the task at hand.
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| Yuhan-Kimberly employees work in an open space office at the firm’s headquarters in Seoul. Yuhan-Kimberly |
This year, the company took it further by encouraging employees to work at Smart Work Centers located in eight cities nationwide few days before and after the biggest national holidays — Lunar New Year’s Day and Chuseok.
As many workers waste time on the road to visit their hometown during the en masse migration season, the firm started to utilize its existing R&D centers and factories in cities including Busan and Gwangju to offer more options for them to choose where they would like to work other than the headquarters in Seoul.
“Yuhan-Kimberly’s flexible work culture is not only increasing business operation efficiency but also reducing needless time wastage,” the official said.
More than 200 companies and organizations have visited Yuhan-Kimberly on field trips to benchmark the smart work system over the past four years, according to the firm.
By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)
