Chairman Choi Spends the First Week of New Year Employees as Usual

Visits 6 Sites across the Country for 3 Days to Give Pep Talks to Employees

Choi Shin Won, Chairman of SKC, makes it a rule to spend time with employees during the first week of each year. This year is no exception. Chairman Choi visited 6 operations across the country even in the holidays to communicate with and encourage employees to achieve this year’s business plans and goals.

Starting with a visit to Pyeongtaek Plant of SKC Solmics and Suwon Plant of SKC on January 2, Chairman Choi visited Gumi Plant and Ulsan Plant of SKC Kolon PI on January 3 and Jinchoen Plant of SKC and Cheonan Plant of SKC Hass on Saturday, January 4.

Chairman Choi has kept this rule for 8 years since 2007. Chairman Choi likes to spend time communicating with employees because it is an excellent communicating tool to find out specifically from the frontline exactly what the issues and concerns are of a particular operation or business. The key is not only to spend time with the leadership team but also to sit with employees and hear their concerns and ideas.

During the site visits, Chairman Choi emphasized that “the chemical industry has no boundaries and our opportunities are almost limitless. We must expand our businesses step by step, starting from the area that we can do best, and synergy.”

He also said, “Our success or failure of our business depends on the company’s culture. We must encourage employees to suggest and share the innovative ways of doing things differently, and make all our endeavors to build a creative corporate culture that will encourage creative thinking driven by passion.” He added “there’s nothing that can replace face-to-face interaction and communication to impact the culture of our organization in a positive way.

In addition to the new-year visits, Chairman Choi visits the sites on every other occasion to sit down employees and hear their concerns. In 2012, he visited the plants of SKC and SK Telesys, and in 2013, he visited the expansion project site of PET plant of SKC Inc. in the U.S. and hosted a barbeque party. He personally cooked meat and had a pleasant, heart-to-hart talk with field employees.

In November 2013, he hosted the global workshop in the PET Film Plant in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, China where he stressed the importance of improving interdepartmental communication and sharing the technical information and best practices among the different departments in order to respond to the changing market needs in the overseas market, and to develop new markets. During dinner with the overseas employees of SKC, he expressed sincere appreciation for their efforts and delivered a special bonus to them.

Such a communication-oriented and field-driven management policy of Chairman Choi has led the labor union to declare in 2007 that there will be no labor dispute permanently. In addition, the labor union agreed during the One-Mind Workshop to Overcome the Crisis held in April to actively cooperate with the Company’s emergency measures and unconditionally authorize the company to fix wages without negotiations.