Samsung is easily one of the most recognizable names in the World when it comes to technology. The company is right up there with Apple when it comes to smartphones, but the South Korean giant makes and sells a hell of a lot more than just that. Right now, Samsung is looking ahead to the future of the Internet of Things as well as more innovative wearable technologies. Part of this push to research new products and possible product lines has come as a result of Samsung’s change in attitude, which the company says is shifting the big, corporate giant into one with a more friendly, startup feel. Now, these changes are going to affect all employees working in Samsung’s buildings, with changes to how employees are addressed as well as what’s expected of them in general.
The changes are aimed at making the general environment at Samsung a lot more pleasant to work in. One of the changes that workers in big businesses the world over will be glad to get rid of are long, potentially unnecessary meetings. Samsung is to recommend to employees that meeting should never be longer than an hour and that only those that absolutely need to be there should be required to attend. This appears to be a way for Samsung to curtail that all-too-familiar meeting structure where a whole team is bought in despite only a few of them being needed for the meeting. On top of this, Samsung is changing the roles of jobs below the Executive structure (which will remain the same) by doing away with titles such as daeri (meaning assistant manager), gwajang (meaning manager) and bujang (meaning team leader). Instead, they will be replaced with four different job titles that are said to be allocated depending on the employee’s competency.
Perhaps most important for a big, well-established corporate like Samsung is the change to some classic Korean expectations of workers. As part of these new changes, employees at Samsung will no longer be expected to stay late working if their superior is still working, and there’s also talk of casual wear in the summer months to make employees feel more comfortable. On top of all of this, all employees will now be addressed with the suffix of “nim”, which is a way of addressing people in a more polite and respectful manner, regardless of gender or position. This startup culture has been glamorized on TV and online, but it’s not just smaller firms that make use of it. Google, Facebook and even Microsoft feature buildings and campuses that encourage a more informal approach to the way people work, and perhaps Samsung is looking to take a leaf out of their books?