Kellogg's Korea HR Director Ritika Lal speaks about the company's employee-oriented welfare policies at her office in Seoul, Wednesday. Courtesy of Kellogg's Korea

The human resource chief at Kellogg's Korea is bringing in a new organizational culture. The Indian national aims to make her company the most welcoming to its employees by accommodating their personal needs as much as possible — from paid maternity leave to arranging various non-work activity sessions during work hours and early leave days for employees to enjoy more free time.

Ritika Lal knows that cutting work hours without adjusting the employees' wages is a money-losing affair. However, the HR director of Kellogg's' regional offices in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as Korea thinks it is a necessary endeavor.

In an interview with The Korea Times at her office in Seoul, Lal said that more companies should start introducing such inclusive welfare policies because employees' needs have become so diverse that they can no longer be attracted by conventional offers.

"Flexible benefits allow our people to focus on self-customization. Each person is different. More and more HR needs to start thinking beyond a one-size-fits-all approach," Lal said. "And the feedback — from our office in Seoul as well as our factory in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province — has been very, very positive. Rather than seeing it from a cost-lens perspective, we chose to see it from an employee's perspective."

Lal has already launched the same policies in Taiwan and Hong Kong under the company's Gold Standard policy. The HR chief knows that different employees have different needs.

"HR has evolved from the past when there were just two or three standard benefits and companies would give a retirement benefit or a leave benefit for everyone. It was the same approach for everybody," Lal said.

"Now, especially with the newer generations, people have different needs. Some of them don't want to have a family but would want to have time off for their hobbies, medical checkup, travel or education. We try to look at our benefits in a way people find what suits them personally."

One of Kellogg's Korea's newest welfare policies includes six months of fully paid maternity leave and one month of fully paid paternity leave. These apply to all employees, whether regular or contracted. The company has even newly hired employees who were about to go on maternity leave.

"We wanted to take away a little bit of the financial burden. Younger employees often think that taking time off to have children is quite expensive," she said.

The company previously introduced a flexible work system that allow employees to leave work one hour early every Friday, leave at 1 p.m. one Friday each month and work from home twice a week. The company on Aug. 19 held Total Health Week to boost employees' mental well-being, encouraging employees to join in and climb the stairs to the office, color therapy, tea ceremony classes and games.

Thanks to such policies, Kellogg's Korea has received various accolades, including being named a Family-Friendly Certified Company by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family four times in a row and 2023 Korea Best Company to Work for certification by GPTW Korea.

"As a multinational company, we want to make sure there's a similar experience on certain benefits for employees whether they're working in India, Korea, Singapore or in the Middle East," Lal said.