SK Group to pursue employee-led ‘deep change’

SK Group, South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate, has been dedicated to its “Deep Change” initiative since Group Chairman Chey Tae-won introduced the key phrase in 2018 to sum up its vision of "fundamental innnovation."

This year, the group will modify its approach to the initiative so that its employees will lead the group's deep change, SK officials said on Monday.

To that end, its top management will discuss innovating the way they work, securing talent for future businesses and improving their evaluation and compensation systems during the 2023 Icheon Forum, its annual groupwide gathering, this week.

“The focus of this year's Icheon Forum is the practice of deep change by encouraging our employees to actively express their opinions,'’ SK Group Senior Vice Chairman Chey Jae-won said at the opening speech for the annual event in Seoul on Monday.

“Employees’ trust and consent is fundamental to the success of the deep change.”

Chey Jae-won is the younger brother of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won. 

Under the topic of employee-led deep change, they will discuss employees’ career development, job security and personal happiness.

The Icheon Forum was launched in 2017, led by the group Chairman Chey Tae-won. At the groupwide annual gathering, outside experts and management discuss new businesses, management practices and technology innovation.

"At this year’s Icheon Forum, we’ll listen to participants’ opinions and suggestions to accelerate deep change in the way we work,” said an SK official. 

The Aug. 21-24 forum will also deal with the topics of generative artificial intelligence, the change in the global industrial landscape and other global issues, said group officials.

A total of 250 participants, including board members and academics, will share their ideas and views about SK Group's management and businesses during the forum.

Fei-Fei Li, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival AI developer, will give presentations about generative AI and relevant businesses.

SK Telecom has recently invested $100 million in the US startup.

At the opening speech, Vice Chairman Chey came up with a new keyword, “customer story,” to emphasize the need to better understand customers and communicate from the customer's point of view.

Back in 2020, Chairman Chey Tae-won introduced the “financial story” watchword in a plegdge to ensuring that each of its businesses makes financial sense.

Write to Jae-Fu Kim at hu@hankyung.com
 


Yeonhee Kim edited this article