Posco to implement biweekly 4-day workweek for office workers

Posco will embrace a biweekly four-day work week for its office workers, the steelmaker said, with no changes in the 40-hour-per-week working hours.

Posco office building in Gangnam District, southern Seoul [REUTERS]

Posco will embrace a biweekly four-day work week for its office workers, the steelmaker said, with no changes in the 40-hour-per-week working hours.

The steelmaker is the first Korean company in the industry, which has to run round-the-clock operations due to the nature of steel manufacturing, to adopt a four-day workweek option.

Posco employees have been working 40 hours per week on average so far, mostly from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. but with flexible commute times, five days a week. Under the biweekly four-day workweek system, scheduled to begin Monday, the working hours will remain at 40 hours a week, but employees can now choose to work an hour more on eight working days — from Monday to the next Thursday, minus the first Friday — and take a day off on Friday.

Employees at Posco’s steelworks in Pohang, North Gyeongsang, and Gwangyang, South Jeolla, will retain the current 12-hour rotating shifts covered by four teams.

The four-day workweek option was first put forward by Posco's management during the collective bargaining last year in order to create a more flexible working environment.

Major companies in Korea, including Samsung and SK, have been experimenting with four- or four-and-a-half-day workweeks, after the idea of a shorter workweek gained traction across the globe during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Under Samsung Electronics' once-a-month four-day work week policy, implemented in June last year, its employees can take a day off every four weeks if they have worked for the designated minimum working hours. SK's major subsidiaries, such as SK Telecom and SK hynix, are running a similar system. SK Telecom employees can take a Friday off every two weeks, a policy first implemented in 2020, and SK hynix once a month.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]