Revising Family-Friendly Certification Standards... Enhancing Effectiveness of SME Certifications

Replacing with indicators such as annual leave utilization rate and family-friendly program implementation
Clear improvements in detailed corporate compliance regulations and certification cancellation criteria

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Jinju] The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family will improve the certification standards for the Family-Friendly Certification System starting next year. The scoring criteria will be adjusted to properly reflect indicators even in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with few or no users of family-friendly programs.

On the 6th, the Ministry held the 32nd Family-Friendly Certification Committee meeting at the Government Seoul Office and confirmed 4,918 family-friendly certified companies and institutions for 2021. This represents a 13.3% (578 entities) increase compared to last year.

The Ministry plans to improve the certification standards to better suit SMEs in order to enhance the quality of the Family-Friendly Certification System. The family-friendly system is a program that certifies companies and institutions that exemplary operate policies such as childbirth and childcare support, and flexible working hours.

Starting next year, the Ministry will revise the 'Implementation of Family-Friendly Programs' category, which currently holds the highest score in the certification evaluation criteria, to better fit the circumstances of SMEs and strengthen the effectiveness of the certification system.

Currently, it is difficult to accurately reflect evaluations when there are no users of family-friendly programs such as parental leave or maternity/paternity leave due to a small number of employees. In such cases, the items are marked as 'Not Applicable,' and only the items with users are evaluated, with scores converted and assigned based on the points allocated to the 'Not Applicable' items.

Going forward, indicators such as 'Annual Leave Utilization Rate' and 'Execution of Family-Friendly Programs' will be used as substitutes to evaluate the family-friendly level of the companies and institutions more realistically.

In addition, the Ministry reviewed and approved detailed standards related to family-friendly regulations under the Labor Standards Act. When the family-friendly company certification announcement is made in April next year, detailed legal standards and certification cancellation criteria that applicants must comply with will be clearly communicated, and compliance will be continuously monitored.

Even after certification, support for family-friendly education, consulting, and an online self-assessment system will be strengthened to enable companies to continuously improve their family-friendly level and self-assess the appropriateness of their certification.

Kim Kyung-sun, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, said, "We expect that this improvement in certification standards will enable more substantial family-friendly company certification evaluations," adding, "We will continue efforts to support work-life balance and foster a family-friendly workplace culture."

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