South Korean IT companies are mulling to make remote working arrangements permanent after return to office work has been delayed by the new spike in coronavirus infections.
The country’s internet giant Naver Corp. on Monday extended telecommuting policy indefinitely, allowing its employees to come to office two days a week amid virus scare. It had employees work from home from Feb. 26 and then obliged them to come to office twice a week from April 20.
Work schedule was to be normalized but put on hold after re-surge of virus infections in Korea over the long holiday week early May.
“Line Works, the work-based messaging platform run by Works Mobile of Naver, helps raise the efficiency for remote workers,” said a Naver official. “We’re confident that current work-from-home can be continued with no trouble in work.”
The country’s biggest chat operator Kakao Corp. also notified its employees that the current one-day-a-week commute will be extended for additional week amid virus threat. The company enforced work-from-home on Feb. 26 and its employees started rotational commute one day a week since April 9.
“This could be an opportunity to change the manner in which companies operate and employees work. Kakao’s online workplace solution Agit and messaging platform Kakao Talk will help speed up transition into open, shared and communicating work environment,” said Mason Yeo and Sean Joh, co-CEOs of Kakao.
SK Telecom, Korea’s largest telecommunications company, also has expanded work-from-home.
