Korea’s leading home and personal care product manufacturer, Yuhan-Kimberly, established as a joint venture with Kimberly-Clark in 1970, introduced flexibility and ‘smart work’ to build an innovative, creative organizational culture. Aiming at a good ‘work-life balance’ for its employees, Yuhan-Kimberly’s ‘smart’ work makes major changes to the quality of work, such as speeding up decision-making processes and improving concentration at work.
The first feature of ‘smart work’ is flexible work hours and a flexible workplace. In addition to its head office, the company built an innovation center in Yongin and a smart work center in Gunpo. In these centers, all employees, including executives, choose their seating according to their work convenience; there are no executive suites. The company did away with the job title hierarchy and dress code, and allowed flexible lunch hours, etc.
The second feature is the mobile office. The company provided tablet PCs to employees and created an electronic signature system for document approval, which enables work while at home or on the move. The company also built a wired and wireless network with the open-seating system, allowing employees to work anywhere inside the workplace.
Employee response to the ‘smart work’ environment has been very positive, mentioning that it increased their concentration at work, brought synergy and increased opportunity to cooperate with employees in other departments, and sped up decision making.”