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| Samsung Electronics' office in Seoul / Yonhap |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Samsung Electronics is working on changing its human resource (HR) management system for the first time in five years aiming to create a more flexible and horizontal organizational culture, the company said Wednesday.
The company has been holding a series of briefing sessions on the HR system realignment plan and told its employees about the changes being pursued.
The organizational overhaul could include expanding the evaluation of workers' performance on an absolute rather than relative scale and adopting peer evaluation methods used by companies in countries such as the United States, according to industry sources.
Industry officials said Samsung's latest attempt highlights the company's aim of enhancing the agility of management decision-making and cutting rising fixed costs.
"The plan intends to keep pace with global IT companies that are rapidly changing their business plans in line with the changing trend," an industry official in local IT industry said.
Samsung Electronics confirmed that the company is seeking a change in its personnel management system.
"By bringing changes to our personnel management system, Samsung Electronics is trying to create a flexible and horizontal organizational culture, and we will be able to announce the changes at the end of this month," one Samsung official said. "As it is a system that has an impact on the work activities of employees, we are preparing for this by collecting various internal and external opinions."
Since Samsung Electronics is the leading company here in terms of its vast contribution to the country's economy, such changes are drawing keen attention from the local industry.
In Korea, not only Samsung but also many other companies had maintained a seniority and rank-based hierarchy, but they are focusing on establishing a horizontal organizational culture that evaluates individual employees' abilities and rewards them accordingly.
Samsung fine-tuned its HR system once before in 2016, simplifying its job ranking from seven notches to four notches ― career level 1 through career level 4. Also, the names employees call each other were also unified by putting a suffix "nim" after their names. Nim can be roughly translated to Mr. or Ms., and it is used to show respect to each other.
Among the possible fine-tuning steps of the HR system, peer review evaluation is receiving a considerable amount of attention. Samsung apparently plans to have employees evaluated by three colleagues chosen randomly.
"At a time when the external environment is changing at a faster pace, Samsung seems to have decided to choose to change to keep up with this huge trend," the industry official said.
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