Korea to create family-friendly government offices
Minister vows to improve working environment for young civil servants
The Ministry of Personnel Management is committed to formulating family-friendly policies concerning public personnel management to lessen the burden on an increasing number of working parents who have to juggle work and child care, according to Minister Kim Seung-ho.
The minister said during a recent interview with The Korea Times that the government will take the initiative in creating a work culture in which workers can do their job but also take care of children without worries to set an example for private companies, amid deepening demographic woes in the country that is struggling with rapid aging and a fast-declining birthrate.
The comments came as the nation’s total fertility rate — the average number of expected births from a woman in her lifetime — fell to a fresh record quarterly low of 0.65 in the fourth quarter of 2023, down 0.05 from a year earlier, according to data from Statistics Korea.
“We will make pan-government efforts to create family-friendly public personnel management policies and working environment in response to an increasing number of households where both parents are working,” Kim said.
“We will include these tasks in upcoming guidelines aimed at innovating culture within the civil service, and grant incentives to offices that have excellent outcomes in this regard.”
The ministry plans to finalize the guidelines, which will be distributed to government offices, by the end of this month and start offering the incentives at the end of the year.
In response to the rapid aging of the population, the ministry is mulling over measures to utilize the knowhow and expertise of retired civil servants.
“We will study overseas cases and consult with various stakeholders to implement a term system to rehire retired civil servants in areas that require specialized knowledge,” Kim said.
According to the minister, many countries around the world, especially those in Central and South America and Asia, have shown interest in Korea’s innovative public personnel management, since the ministry was launched in 2014.
The country’s digital-based public personnel management system came in first in the International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Index that was published in 2019 by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and the Institute for Government in London.
Last November, the ministry and the OECD launched the Asia Public Service Network — a cooperative body in the field of public human resources management — participated in by countries such as Japan, China and Mongolia as well as ASEAN nations.
“The launch of the network is meaningful in that Korea’s capability of leading the personnel management innovation in Asia has been recognized,” Kim said.
“Through the network, we will share our knowhow with the international society and play a pivotal role in multilateral cooperation by suggesting effective solutions to matters the public sector faces, such as the low birthrate and digitalization.” Next month, the ministry plans to present the results of its joint study with the Astana Civil Service Hub (ACSH) about the introduction of Korea’s e-Saram electronic personnel management system in other countries, at the American Society for Public Administration.
ACSH is an institutional platform for knowledge sharing in the field of civil service, while the e-Saram system creates databases for human resources from recruitment to retirement.
Removing borders between ministries
The ministry is pushing for the “One Team Korea” initiative that calls for the strategic interchange of director- and manager-level officials between government offices.
Kim said such a measure came as the administration field has changed rapidly and become more complicated, making it difficult for ministries to cope with complex issues individually.
“In these circumstances, it is essential to remove borders between ministries so they can become one team,” Kim said.
“We will consistently manage achievements of those interchanged and offer them special treatment in order to create substantial outcomes.”
The ministry is also working to innovate the culture of public offices to boost generational understanding in response to the falling competition rate in the government’s official recruitment and the rising number of those who quit their job in less than five years since being recruited, which indicates that the profession is not as popular as it used to be.
Kim cited a rigid work culture and low wages in addition to malicious complaints from some members of the public as factors for the declining popularity of the profession among young people.
The ministry is taking this issue seriously as younger generations’ growing hesitance to become civil servants could hinder the inflow of people seeking to work in government offices.
“We will actively communicate with young people to offer them accurate information about the civil service,” Kim said, noting that the ministry will expand programs in which incumbent civil servants visit universities or high schools to reach out to younger generations.
“We will also improve the working environment for early-career civil servants by raising their salaries and expanding annual leave,” he added.