Homeplus Executives Including CEO Im Ilsun to Forfeit 20% of Salaries Starting June

22,000 Employees Share Pain
"Overcoming the COVID-19 Crisis"

Homeplus Gangseo Headquarters

[Asia Economy Reporter Minyoung Cha] CEO and President Im Ilsun and other executives of Homeplus have voluntarily decided to return 20% of their salaries for three months. This is the first attempt since the company's founding.

Homeplus announced on the morning of the 17th at an executive meeting held at the headquarters building in Deungchon-dong, Seoul, that executives at the division head level and above resolved to voluntarily return 20% of their salaries for three months starting this June.

Previously, Homeplus recorded its worst performance since its founding based on the 2019 fiscal year (March 2019 to February 2020). During this period, sales and operating profit decreased by 4.69% and 38.39% respectively compared to the previous year, amounting to 7.3002 trillion KRW and 160.2 billion KRW. This was due to the growth of e-commerce competitors, the ongoing recession in the offline retail industry, and a decrease in customer visits since the beginning of the year caused by COVID-19.

Accordingly, the executives decided to take this measure to share the pain of the company and its employees. Previously, Homeplus froze the salaries of all executives including CEO Im Ilsun and did not pay performance bonuses since the 2017 fiscal year due to failure to achieve management goals caused by regulatory restrictions on distribution and the recession in the retail industry.

Homeplus expects this recession to continue this year as well. The largest annual founding anniversary promotion held every March was not conducted this year due to the impact of COVID-19. In May, large discount stores were excluded from the usage destinations of the emergency disaster relief funds provided by the government to all citizens, further reducing the number of customers visiting stores. Currently, asset securitization is being considered for about three stores against this background.

However, the company plans to maintain employment as regular employees by transferring and reallocating staff to main business divisions such as online or other stores even if some offline stores are closed. Through this, it is expected that the labor shortage issues raised in some stores so far can also be somewhat alleviated. Additionally, the company will put more effort into the online business in the future and explore various ways to bring back customers who have left offline marts.

Im Ilsun, CEO of Homeplus, said, "In the midst of the offline retail market downturn, we decided to voluntarily return salaries together with executives to share the pain experienced by 22,000 employees and their families," adding, "We believe that opportunities always come after great crises, and we will overcome this crisis by uniting the strength of all Homeplus members from the president to the staff."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.