Bo-eun leads the digital content team. She has covered foreign affairs, North Korea, tech, economy and gender issues at The Korea Times. She did a short stint at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where she obtained a new perspective on news production and life. Small sources of joy for her are lounging in the sun, having a good latte and swimming.
Banks experiment with working space
Employees of Woori Bank's digital division hold a meeting in a room labeled “room where everyone has to say something.” This is a means to hear more from lower-level employees, who usually remain silent and listen to their superiors in Korea's hierarchical culture. / Courtesy of Woori Bank
By Kim Bo-eun
By Kim Bo-eun
Banking is known to be among the most conservative sectors here, being hierarchical and slow to change. Yet some banks are taking drastic steps to innovate their organizational culture to adapt to the digital era.
At KEB Hana Bank's headquarters in central Seoul, employees choose where to sit when they come to work each morning. They do not have their own desks. They cannot sit in the same spot for more than five days. A cloud-based system in the common area saves the documents employees have been working on so that they can open them wherever they sit the next day.
Managers, who lost their offices, now sit with employees in the common area. Executives have managed to keep their offices, but employees can see exactly what they are doing, because the walls are now transparent.
The measures were taken in 2017, with the intention of boosting communication and cooperation, according to a KEB Hana Bank official.
He said before the changes were made, dialogue between lower-level employees and managers was more formal.
“Before the changes were made, lower-level employees felt pressured to take documents with them when reporting to the managers in their office, but now, since they sit together, they can communicate more comfortably,” the official said.
“We definitely have a lot more dialogue, and have also been able to save costs,” he said.
KEB Hana Bank is saving up to 3 billion won annually on eliminating unnecessary offices and desks.
The bank found that not all of the desks at work were needed, as many employees work outside of the office, and others were on leave or vacation.
“We found that we only needed 85 percent of the desks we had,” the official said.
“With the money we saved on getting rid of unnecessary working spaces, the bank instead created a library, gym and sleeping rooms for employees.”
The photo shows a “capsule sleeping room” at KEB Hana Bank. The bank created this room by eliminating offices previously occupied by managers to provide sleep-deprived employees a place to rest. / Courtesy of KEB Hana Bank
While the floors the employees of each department work on are designated, Hana is creating a space on the 24th floor of its main building, where employees from different departments can come and work together on projects.
Woori Bank created a new office for its digital department, across from the bank's headquarters in central Seoul, in December last year. It eliminated partitions between subdivisions and created meeting rooms designed to enhance dialogue among employees.
An example is its meeting room where “everyone talks.” This is a means to hear more from lower-level employees, who usually remain silent and listen to their superiors in Korea's hierarchical culture.
“The idea is to create an environment like that of an IT firm, as the digital division leads innovation in finance. The office aims to create an agile and flexible culture,” a Woori official said.
Meanwhile, Citibank Korea, which will relocate its headquarters next year, has similar plans for its new office.
The most distinct feature is that there will be no separate office for the CEO. There will only be partitions, a Citibank Korea official said.
“Citibank Korea is pursuing a flexible workspace called a smart office to enhance workplace efficiency and satisfaction as part of a global standard workplace program,” he said.
This will not be the first case where the CEO of a bank does not have an office, as this is the case for Kakao Bank, one of the country's two internet-only banks.
“The CEO works in the same space as other employees and this enables direct communication,” a Kakao Bank official said.
“We have also been able to save space by eliminating offices for our three executives and have created a rest area for employees instead,” he said.