Minister of Employment: "To Overcome COVID-19, Telecommuting Must Expand... Policy Support Provided"

107 Billion KRW Support for Indirect Labor Costs of SME and Mid-sized Companies' Remote Work from January to November
1.14 Million Remote Workers as of August...12 Times Increase Compared to Pre-COVID Levels

Minister of Employment and Labor, An Kyung-duk. (Photo by Yonhap News)

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] An Kyung-duk, Minister of Employment and Labor, stated on the 17th, "To overcome the COVID-19 infectious disease crisis, the expansion of remote work is more necessary than anything else."

On the same day, Minister An visited the office of Korea Callaway Golf, a golf product manufacturing and sales company located in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and said, "The government will spare no policy support to establish remote work as one of the routine working methods."

He emphasized, "For remote work to be smoothly established, it is not enough to simply change personnel regulations and build IT systems. It is important to create a system based on trust between labor and management and to foster a culture where employees work autonomously through the firm will and efforts of the management."

He added, "The government will support indirect labor costs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized companies, and also support the construction of infrastructure necessary for remote work. We will also alleviate difficulties in personnel management through consulting related to remote work."

Since the beginning of this year until last month, the Ministry of Employment and Labor has supported 10.7 billion KRW in indirect labor costs for remote and telework to 1,629 SMEs and mid-sized companies. According to Statistics Korea, as of August this year, the number of remote workers was 1.14 million, about 12 times higher than 95,000 in August 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19.

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