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.
IT firms' toxic work culture comes under scrutiny
By Kim Bo-eun
By Kim Bo-eun
The recent death of a Naver employee is shedding light on a culture prevalent at Korea's largest IT firms that is proving to be harmful to individuals as well as the organizations.
A worker at Korea's top portal was found dead last week, after he complained he had been under high levels of work-related stress. A flurry of posts appeared on Blind, an anonymous online community for office workers, alleging workplace bullying by a certain superior.
"We consider this a heavy matter," Naver CEO Han Seong-sook said in an email sent out to employees. "We will improve aspects that need improvement and do our best to prevent such incidents from recurring."
Naver said it will introduce measures according to the results of investigations by the police and a committee. "We have commissioned the investigation to an independent third party committee," a Naver official said. "Measures will be taken once the investigation is completed." Naver's union hired a law firm to conduct a separate investigation of the incident.
The IT firm said it has been running multiple channels for accepting complaints, and has adhered to regulations that have made it mandatory for employees to attend programs on preventing workplace bullying.
The news came as a shock given Naver is regarded as one of the most-sought after workplaces among young workers, for its prestige, generous compensation and welfare benefits, as well as what was known as advanced organizational culture. The company, however, is also notorious for heavy workloads and intense internal competition. Such assessments by employees of the firm are found easily on Blind. The platform requires members to certify they work with a certain company to be able to post anonymous reviews about it.
This is not the first time workplace bullying has been exposed at a major IT firm. Kakao came under fire in April, after an employee made a post on Blind that showed warning signs of suicide. The cited problem was with the terminology for the company's assessment system. Posts on the community also said complaints about bullying in assessments of superiors were identified and retaliated against. Following the controversy, Kakao fixed part of its system.
"These companies have achieved explosive growth in a relatively short period, as they have become giant companies that began as startups in the late 1990s. They may have the necessary systems in place, but it appears their organizational culture is lagging. The latest incident only shows that the company still has yet to adopt a truly horizontal culture," an industry official said.
The problem also appears to lie in effective grievance procedures. "In many cases, the identities of employees who file complaints become exposed, which makes others reluctant to seek out these channels," the official said.
Another industry official said, "All companies in the tech sector employ an assessment system of one's coworkers, and the company could not have been unaware of the alleged attitude of the person in question, based on the assessments made so far."
He added, "The fact that no measures were taken against the person up until this incident just goes to show that the company did not have a properly functioning system. This is a great factor demotivating employees.”
Employees' diverse backgrounds are also seen as a factor possibly contributing to workplace divisions and conflict. Experienced workers from many different companies with varying cultures comprise a large part of tech firms, given the high turnover rate in the industry. Relations based on hometown and alma mater are also widely cited as factors creating divisions within workplaces here.
Korea introduced a law in 2019 banning bullying in the workplace. Complaints, however, grew to 5,823 in 2020 from the previous year.