Does free seating really work for Samil accountants?

Free seats at Samil PwC's new office in the new Amore Pacific building in Yongsan-gu, Seoul / Courtesy of Samil PwC

By Lee Suh-yoon

An increasing number of companies here are adopting “a free seating system” to create a more open and collaborative workspace. Some employees, however, have expressed concerns it could encroach on their privacy and reduce worker productivity.

Kim Young-sik, CEO of Samil PwC / Korea Times file

Samil PricewaterhouseCoopers (Samil PwC), Korea's largest domestic accounting firm, announced it would apply an unassigned seating system to its new office in the new AmorePacific building in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Wednesday.

“The new keywords of our new workplace are efficiency, functionality, and openness,” said Kim Young-sik, CEO of Samil PwC. “Individual seats can now be used for collaborative work anytime.”

Traditional Korean workspaces assigned each employee to a closed-off desk where they could set up their individualized working space with necessary materials – often furnished with a personal mug and slippers.

In the new unassigned seating system, all employees store their work equipment in a locker and unpack them at a new seat every day. These “seats” are often located on co-working desks that offer little privacy.

Some have misgivings about this recent trend, especially in terms of employee privacy and work efficiency.

“I think it would be difficult to concentrate, sitting in a different spot every day in an open space with other employees constantly walking around me, glancing at my laptop screen,” said a 35-year-old office worker surnamed Jung.

Not being able to set up one's work materials in a designated spot also poses some difficulties.

“It is inconvenient, not being able to set up work-related books or stationery in a designated spot.” said a 39-year-old office employee at Lotte Mart, which started an unassigned seating system this year. “During the first few weeks, we had problems where some people were simply leaving their things at certain seats, stopping others from using those seats.”

He added there are advantages as well.

“Collaboration is easier and the free seating system helps you meet people from other divisions because you never know who you will end up sitting next to,” he said. “It's also nice that you're no longer required to sit and work next to your department boss.”

Lotte, Microsoft Korea and Hanwha 63 City are some of the firms that have already implemented a free seating system.

Samil PwC said it was too early to assess its new free seating system.

“There have been no major complaints yet,” a Samil PwC spokesperson said. “We only applied the system last week so we have not collected detailed feedback from employees yet.”