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Reporter's NotebookCan English names break hierarchy in Shinhan?

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Shinhan Financial Group headquarters in Seoul / Korea Times photo by Hong In-ki
Shinhan Financial Group headquarters in Seoul / Korea Times photo by Hong In-ki

By Park Jae-hyuk

Shinhan Financial Group's two subsidiaries have recently joined the trend of using English names at the office, as part of efforts to break their hierarchical structures and allow their employees a sense of freedom to become more creative.

According to Shinhan Life Insurance, Monday, employees of its customer strategy group, which was newly established to prepare for the insurer's integration with Orange Life Insurance next year, began to address each other by English names for horizontal communication.

Shinhan DS, the group's IT subsidiary led by former Bain & Company consultant Sunny Yi, also decided in May to use English nicknames at the office for horizontal corporate culture.

The nation's leading financial group is seemingly trying to be as innovative as fintech firms, such as KakaoBank, whose employees have already addressed CEO Yun Ho-young as "Daniel," since its launch in 2016.

But a question still arises whether this experiment will succeed or not, considering Shinhan's corporate culture, which has been considered the most rigid and conservative, even among the nation's banking groups.

The same experiment done at its benchmark subsidiary, Shinhan Bank, ended in failure in 2019.

When Shinhan Bank Executive Vice President Cho Kyoung-sun led the bank's customer service center at that time, its employees addressed each other by English names. However, the bank's other departments did not adopt the change.

In this regard, Shinhan seems to need more drastic changes, such as hiring of talented "outsiders."

Although Chairman Cho Yong-byoung has continued to make efforts to attract experts outside of the company, even the Shinhan DS CEO Yi had complained of the group's conservative decision makers, who refuse to listen to opinions of the experts coming from outside.

Against this backdrop, Shinhan ranked third among domestic banks, in among university students' most favored workplaces in a survey done by local job market information provider Incruit.

The survey showed KakaoBank was selected as the top pick with a 27.3 percent of votes, way above the second place KB Kookmin Bank's 17.7 percent and the third place Shinhan's 13.6 percent.

"The rigid corporate culture reminds me of my military life," a Shinhan Bank employee wrote on Jobplanet, another job market information provider. "This could create great pressure for those who are not used to it, especially female employees."

The Incruit survey has proved most jobseekers these days regard corporate culture and work-life balance as more important factors than high salary and other benefits.

Considering this, there is not much time left for Shinhan to innovate itself.
Park Jae-hyuk pjh@koreatimes.co.kr


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