Song-yi punches in at the smart work center
Song-Yi, who has been serving as a public servant since 2008, wakes up to chaos every morning. In the wee hours of the morning, she has to feed her three-year-old boy and hurry him to a nursery. And then she commutes to work for an hour and 20 minutes. Her way home after a long day at work is pretty much the same. Since she lives far from her company, she leaves the office early and heads straight to the nursery to pick up her boy, but she still cannot make it before the nursery closes.
However, by 2015, this will change. First of all, her hectic morning schedule will be given a much-needed makeover. She will not have to rush out of her home to go to work on time. She will be able to have breakfast with her family, take her boy to a nursery and go to work in a relaxed manner. She will successfully juggle work and family thanks to "smart work."
Song-Yi will go to the smart work center every morning. Since the smart work center is 15 minutes away from her house, she can check her daily work schedule via her smartphone. Upon arriving at the smart work center, she takes care of the paper work assigned to her and makes several electronic payments before she reports to her boss via the smartphone. Most of her job will be done in a paperless fashion, so she doesn't need to carry a briefcase filled with documents.
Meetings are arranged in a video conferencing mode through smart TVs installed at the smart work center. Meeting materials and documents can be downloaded via the smartphone and printed out through printers located at the smart work center. Thanks to the raised work efficiency, workers can call it a day earlier than usual. By 6 o'clock, Song-Yi can arrive home to have dinner and spend some quality time with her family.
To push ahead with smart work, the Korean government aims to expand the number of Wi-Fi service areas to 53,000 within this year. Also, the number of cities with Wi-Fi coverage will increase to 84 by 2012, and the share of giga-speed Internet services, which is 10 times faster than the current ones, will go up to 20 percent by 2015. To learn more about specific plans for the realization of smart work, Korea IT Times interviewed Lee Kark-bum, Chairman of the Presidential Council on Information Society, who has been busy working for the promotion of "smart work."
Chairman Lee said, "The construction of a smart Korea is a must for lifting Korea to the ranks of the developed nations. And the centerpiece of a smart Korea is 'smart work.' Once 'smart work' takes root, its effect will sweep across the whole spectrum of society and the economy, taking the government and the lives of general people to a whole new level. This is because people will become able to work anytime, anywhere in an era of 'smart work' -- a revolutionary departure from the current situation in which people have to commute to work every day and stay in the office from 9 to 6 without exception.
He continued, "Specifically speaking, the form of 'smart work' can be divided into the following three: "working at home,' "mobile work" (which means working while out on the move), and "working at smart work centers," which are situated near the employee's home. 'Smart work' will bring about radical changes in corporate culture: hierarchical corporate culture will morph into a horizontal one that has been widely seen in developed nations. In addition, tasks that have been taken care of by one person can be shared by many. Moreover, cloud-computing will expedite information sharing and application, thereby jacking up work efficiency."
Chairman Lee expects that the full-scale launch of "smart work" will change the notion of one person, one company, which means one person works solely for one employer. As smart work enables employees to take care of their jobs anywhere and anytime, they don't need to confine themselves to only one company. Chairman Lee estimated that more people will work as freelancers, giving rise to new trends such as one-person businesses.
'Smart work' is an irreversible global trend. Developed nations, including the United States and Japan, are putting lots of effort to make 'smart work' widespread. The United States expects that 43.4 percent of the nation's entire workforce will turn to the smart way of working by 2016, and the US Senate has passed a bill designed to revitalize information & communications-based teleworking. As of 2007, in the Netherlands, 49 percent of all businesses already embraced the teleworking system. The Japanese government is also planning on expanding the share of telecommuting workers into 20 percent of the entire workforce within this year.
Of course, there are prerequisites for the realization of 'smart work.' It requires a paradigm shift in the way people think about work. It is not a simple transition from online to offline. It is an innovation that provides people with untrammeled access to their work anytime and anywhere.
Chairman Lee mentioned, "Since 'smart work' is mainly characterized by high flexibility in working location and hours, there are many things that need to be modified. First of all, work processes should be segmented in a more detailed fashion, and making decisions on who is accountable and in charge should be preceded. Contrary to the current hierarchical way of dividing work tasks, a clear line should be drawn between each individual's assigned tasks. To that end, tacit knowledge lurking in the brain of a worker should be transformed into explicit knowledge in the form of manuals so as to facilitate information sharing and collaboration. Through this process, the current physical contact-based performance evaluation system will shift into the merit system, consequently leading the knowledge and information-based society towards the right direction.
The Korean government's push for the promotion of 'smart work' is also rated very positively because realization of smart work can push forward a lot of government agendas.
For a start, Korea is notorious for being one of the most overworked nations. However, our productivity is not as high in relative terms. Above all, 'smart work' will do away with time-consuming long commutes and employee burnout. And with information accessible anytime, anywhere, productivity will be greatly enhanced. Second, just like the Netherlands who have succeeded in boosting employment by 20 percent through 'smart work,' Korea is expected to create more jobs by pursuing 'smart work.'
Third, the adoption of 'smart work' will allow women to work in a flexible manner, so the childbirth rate will climb. What's more, people can delay their retirement, which will lead to an increase in the productivity of the elderly. Fourth, 'smart work' will result in a reduction of rush-hour traffic, thereby significantly cutting down CO2 emissions. Some statistics even say that if 8.6 million office workers 'smart-work' once a week, CO2 emissions would be reduced by 1.11 million ton a year.
Despite Korea's status as a world-class ICT infrastructure powerhouse, it has been rated low in terms of value creation, addressing current issues and pursuit of public welfare through IT. Therefore, Korea's recent endeavor for 'smart work' is expected to successfully project Korea as a genuine ICT powerhouse in the world.
