The Bank of Korea Undergoes Major Changes: "Reducing Governor's Authority and Appointing Leaders from Grade 5 Staff"

Governor Lee Chang-yong Reflects International Organization Experience
Reforms Organizational Culture from 'Vertical to Horizontal'
Abolishes Group Evaluation to Resolve Hierarchy

Lee Chang-yong, Governor of the Bank of Korea, is delivering a commemorative speech at the 72nd anniversary ceremony of the Bank of Korea held on the morning of the 10th at the Booyoung Taepyeong Building in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Joint Press Corps

The Bank of Korea announced on the 16th that it has prepared a 'Management and Personnel Innovation Plan' aimed at significantly reducing the governor's authority and accelerating decision-making speed to transform its vertical organizational culture into a horizontal one.

According to the Bank of Korea, this innovation plan includes comprehensive improvements not only in organizational and personnel systems but also in work procedures and personnel operations.

The Bank explained that the plan was formulated by incorporating the experiences of Governor Lee Chang-yong, who took office in April and has worked at international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

First, the Bank of Korea will significantly delegate the authority of the governor and deputy governors to the assistant deputy governors and reclassify the departments under the assistant deputy governors based on functional and task similarities. Through this, the assistant deputy governors will serve as the Bank's top executives internally and externally for their respective functions.

Considering department size and work characteristics, a bureau (guk)-division (bu)-team structure will be applied when sub-organization installation is necessary; otherwise, a bureau-team structure will be used. Task force (TF) formation authority will be granted to bureau chiefs, and team organization authority to division chiefs to activate agile organizations.

The Bank explained, "Employees at grades 4 to 5 can also be appointed as leaders of agile organizations, and administrative procedures for forming agile organizations will be simplified."

Additionally, employees will be encouraged to accumulate the highest expertise in their respective fields by authoring research reports under their own names and presenting them externally, fostering an achievement-oriented culture.

A specialist career path system will also be introduced, allowing qualified employees to select their area of expertise and continuously work in the corresponding department.

For employees at grade 3 or above, personnel with verified expertise in the relevant field will be appointed, and if performance is poor, removal from the position is also possible.

In particular, the Bank plans to expand the regional headquarters' research work outwardly and produce differentiated content through collaboration with headquarters departments.

In the long term, the regional headquarters will be reorganized into a metropolitan headquarters-centered system, changing the current 16 regional headquarters organizational structure into 7 metropolitan headquarters and 9 regional headquarters.

The employee evaluation system will also be reformed. The strict relative evaluation scoring method will be abolished and replaced with a system assigning five performance grades, while collective performance evaluations for departments and teams will be eliminated to alleviate hierarchical atmospheres within the organization.

The Bank of Korea intends to sequentially implement feasible systems first, considering practical conditions such as feasibility and side effects.

The Bank explained, "Within this year, we will prioritize implementing delegation of job authority, expanding information sharing and review activation, and establishing general function and specialist staff ranks, and starting next year, we plan to sequentially implement other systems beginning with the expansion of the bureau-division-team system."

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