By Kang Seung-woo
Since assuming office in March 2009, POSCO Chairman Chung Joon-yang has pushed to create an employee-friendly environment to fully harness their ability in the rapidly changing business landscape.
As part of his efforts, the steel company has introduced a new work schedule and opened a rest area, while seeking to offer mobile and smart offices.
POSCO has officially put in place a four-team, two-shift schedule for 16 teams and factories since Jan. 1 this year to the approval of the majority of its employees.
The scheme began its six-month test run from July to December 2010 at several sites including the sister factory at Pohang Steelworks and the steelmaking factory 1 at Gwangyang Steelworks.
More than 75.2 percent of employees from those places voted for the transition to the new modus operandi.
The four-team two-shift schedule is operated with two of the four teams working 12 hour shifts each day, with the remainder resting, leading to 191 days off in comparison with 103 days under the previous four-team three-shift one.
POSCO expects this new work schedule will let employees gain plenty of rest after focused shifts, leading to various leisure and self-improvement activities, while the company reduces losses due to frequent shift changes.
“The four-team, two-shift scheme is enabling employees to share time with their family,” Chung said.
“When it takes root in POSCO’ corporate culture, it will affect our society positively.”
On the back of good responses from its employees, the steelmaker launched its second schedule at 29 teams and factories in April, while the two test operations are still in place.
The chairman promised to make the firm a fun place to work in its efforts to push forward his three management principles of creative management, environment-friendly management and open management.
In line with his continuous declaration since assuming office, POSCO opened an entertainment and rest lounge in September 2009, called “Poreka,” a combined word of POSCO and Eureka in hopes of encouraging its employees’ critical thinking and creativity through a variety of programs.
It was reopened after its expansion in June 2010, and runs programs to promote cultural art education in which the entire family can participate on weekends.
In its efforts to bring information technology-based innovation to its offices and factories, POSCO has distributed smartphones to its employees in the marketing department, who often work outside, as well as directors and executives. As of August last year, some 16,000 were given the high-tech devices.
They enable the users to take advantage of various services, including email, scheduling and mobile payments.
POSCO launched a comprehensive e-learning system in April last year to provide better education services to employees of affiliates and also accommodate growing educational demand from overseas subsidiaries.
The newly-started e-learning system offers a customized environment allowing affiliates to operate necessary projects, and also provides system to be able to research educational demand at any time and directly open courses. A self-directed education system was also opened, linked to personal score cards (PSC) allowing planning by each user.
POSCO created a ‘smart office’ to improve work efficiency in February this year.
“In order to become a ‘smart POSCO,’ a smart way of working is necessary, and the smart office is essential to change the way employees work,” a POSCO official said.
In the smart office, employees do not have a designated seat, allowing them to freely move around according to their tasks, while meeting rooms are available for the varied number of people and video conference calls are feasible at any time.
POSCO expects the smart office to build up communication between the top and bottom of the firm and eventually to establish a horizontal corporate structure.