Seoul City Individual Annual Leave Use and Departmental Employee Sports Festival Policy 'Wagle Wagle'

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The Seoul Metropolitan Government has come under criticism after it was confirmed that the annual regular “Workplace Sports Culture Event,” which is organized to promote the health and harmony of public officials, is being conducted this year with a policy requiring employees to use their personal annual leave.

On November 16, during the administrative audit of the 321st regular session Operations Committee, Kim Gyu-nam, a member of the Seoul Metropolitan Council (People Power Party·Songpa 1), pointed out that the Seoul city government set a policy instructing public officials to use personal annual leave for the “Employee Sports Competition,” which aims to enhance the health and organizational cohesion of Seoul city officials, thereby lowering employee morale.

According to Councilor Kim Gyu-nam, Seoul conducts biannual department-level sports competitions involving all team members among approximately 10,000 public officials, in accordance with the Framework Act on Sports and the Seoul Metropolitan Government Ordinance on Public Officials’ Welfare.

The Employee Sports Competition is a project operated under the responsibility of department heads with allocated budgets. Once the date and content of the sports competition are finalized, all team members are required to participate as part of workplace organizational activities. However, the operational guidelines were set to require the use of personal leave such as early leave or annual leave.

This issue surfaced in October 2022 when a local government official in charge of service affairs inquired about the attendance handling of the Employee Sports Competition through the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s National Petition System.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety responded by referring to the government’s 2005 recommendation to refrain from holding sports events on weekdays and to conduct them after working hours, stating that if held during working hours, early leave should be processed.

Accordingly, the Seoul city official in charge of the Employee Sports Competition distributed a policy notice to all departments in the second half of this year, specifying that attendance should be handled by using personal annual leave or flexible working hours.

Immediately after the official document dated October 10, which included the use of annual leave, was delivered to departments, 52 related posts and 286 comments appeared on the Seoul city public officials’ free bulletin board, with a total of over 106,000 views, indicating a flood of protests.

The posts and comments mostly expressed sentiments such as “Honestly, I used to like the sports competition, but I will never participate if I have to use my annual leave,” and “Sports competition boycott,” showing that the sports competition, intended to promote employee health and departmental unity, actually lowered employee morale.

However, despite the operational policy instructing the use of personal annual leave for attendance handling at the Employee Sports Competition, the department responsible for the event has not even confirmed whether the event was actually conducted using personal annual leave, raising concerns that the department-level sports competitions may be operated inconsistently.

Councilor Kim stated, “The Seoul workplace sports culture event is a long-term, regularly promoted project led by the city in accordance with relevant laws and should be considered an extension of work. There is no regulation in the public officials’ service rules prohibiting weekday sports competitions, and if attendance is processed as annual leave, it becomes difficult to apply official injury compensation for accidents during the event. Therefore, a reconsideration of the operational guidelines requiring the use of annual leave for sports competitions is necessary.”

In response, Hyun Kyung-byeong, Chief Secretary to the Mayor of Seoul, said, “We believe this operational regulation does not fit the current era, which values the use of annual leave as a personal right. We will prepare improvement measures through opinion gathering such as employee surveys.”

A Seoul city official explained, “Previously, employees took leave to attend the sports competition, but it was judged to be undesirable from the citizens’ perspective, so they were required to use annual leave.”

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