Along with the efforts of government and politicians to reduce working hours, SK Telecom will introduce autonomous flexible working hours from March 2018 at the earliest. Under the new system, workers can decide their working hours during the day as long as they work for a certain number of hours over a certain length of time.
SK Telecom labor and management agreed to introduce a new flexible working hours system of 80 hours every two weeks, with details to be determined through further discussion. The company will strengthen its infrastructure networks to help the new system take root.
Adoption of the new system is to follow the trend of reducing working hours, while the government and political parties work on revising the Labor Standards Act to reduce weekly working hours from a maximum 68 to 52. A spokesperson from SK Group stated that “the affiliates of SK are doing their best to innovate their way of work, improving the corporate culture and efficiency from the beginning of this year. The flexible working hours plans are in line with such innovation.”
The Chairman of SK Group, Tae-Won Chey, recognized the “difficulty of innovating business models with the existing way of work. It is time to break the assumptions that employees of an organization must work for long periods of time in the same place.”