Jung Tae-young, Vice Chairman of Hyundai Card, Innovates Corporate Culture to Match the Endemic Era

[Asia Economy Reporter Yu Je-hoon] As the COVID-19 endemic (periodic outbreak of infectious diseases) becomes full-fledged, Hyundai Card is undertaking a corporate culture reform with the 'future' of working methods in mind.

According to the financial sector on the 17th, Vice Chairman Jung Tae-young of Hyundai Card is leading the adjustment of corporate culture and work systems under the slogan "Better Work, Better Life." The role of corporate culture is to create a working environment suited to the new era, where employees can pursue efficiency and work-life balance based on their own sense of responsibility.

Before COVID-19, Vice Chairman Jung had been attempting to enhance employees' autonomy and improve efficiency in the work environment. Representative examples include the flexible working hours system 'Flex Time' introduced in 2017 and 'Flex Lunch,' which allows employees to use one hour of their day as lunch time at their discretion. Both systems attracted attention in the conservative financial sector.

With the advent of the endemic era, these efforts have continued. In May of this year, Hyundai Card became the first financial company in Korea to introduce 'permanent remote work.' The remote work rate is set according to the characteristics of each department's work and situation, and employees can freely choose the dates they want to work from home. The goal of this system is to entrust the entire process of deciding when and where to work to the employees' autonomy, enabling them to generate diverse ideas in a freer environment.

Vice Chairman Jung is also actively introducing follow-up systems to help the new working style settle more quickly. In June, the company opened a base office called Digital Office Gangnam near Gangnam Station in Seoul. This system provides a third workplace other than the office and home, allowing employees to freely choose their work environment and work efficiently.

In September, to create an efficient work environment, Hyundai Card introduced an IT support system for remote work and provided employees with digital coins worth approximately 500,000 KRW. Employees can use these D coins to purchase work-related devices such as monitors, mice, keyboards, and headsets at affiliated employee malls.

Vice Chairman Jung is also considering the efficiency of face-to-face activities. In the endemic era, as face-to-face communication time is expected to relatively decrease, the demand for more efficient face-to-face communication is anticipated to increase.

To complement this, Vice Chairman Jung is securing various efficient face-to-face communication channels. A representative example is Cross Talk. Cross Talk is a program where two headquarters from different business divisions share their business status and explore collaboration possibilities. Since this year, Vice Chairman Jung has introduced small Cross Talks at the unit level within headquarters to facilitate faster collaboration in smaller organizational units. Both practitioners and managers attend the discussions to ensure that the collaboration goes beyond simple idea exchanges and leads to practical cooperation.

Communication among employees is also increasing through the expansion of CEO town hall meetings. In June, a session was held for new and experienced employees to share thoughts on the company's present and future vision and economic issues. In the second meeting in October, the government chairman met with manager-level employees of Hyundai Commercial to discuss major business issues of Hyundai Commercial and key industry topics. In December, a town hall meeting will be held for employees in the digital division.

Recently, the company held the first 'Digital Input/Output (I/O)' session to share digital business-related issues, allowing all employees to share Hyundai Card’s digital technology innovations and utilization cases. This increased employees' understanding of the company's digital business and provided opportunities to explore ways to apply digital technology in their respective work areas.

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