POSCO will hold an event for communication and harmony to take down the wall and create a new global corporate culture, the steelmaker said recently. 

Last year, the steel giant held such an event in September made up of various group events including balloon flying, rope jumping, group races, baseball played with the feet, tug-a-war, and other events for its staff to strengthen communication and harmony, the steelmaker said.

High-ranking executives at the event last year included Chairman Chung Joon-yang, Representative Lee Joo-hyun of the labor side of the Labor-Management Council, and Chairman Kim Byung-pil of the Vendor Partner Council, all three of whom participated in the traditional musical and dancing events such as playing traditional drums, flutes, and cymbals while wearing colorful head bands.

Following the exciting event, Chairman Chung poured “makkoli,” a traditional rice wine, for every participant and gave a toast for better communication and harmony in creating a new global corporate culture.

The new global corporate culture, which POSCO is determined to create, will be displayed well in the steelmaker’s “joint ownership system of performance results.”

POSCO has been making efforts to strengthen its growth partnership with its SME vendors through the new global corporate culture under the idea that the new culture will lead to strengthening its own competitive strength around the world.

POSCO was the first company in Korea to introduce the Benefit Sharing System in March 2004 to share benefits with its SME partner firms in such areas as technology development, cost reduction, and localization of popular foreign products and technologies. The steelmaker has been providing support to SME partner firms to develop new technologies and boost productivity through the system.

For the first eight years since the introduction of the system, POSCO provided support to 669 SME cooperative firms in over 1,389 cases that needed support and paid out 132.8 billion won in bonuses for jobs well done to those firms.

Since 2011, the Benefit Sharing System has been extended to include SMEs in the second and third group of vendors with the financial resources to support the system increased to 160 billion won in 2012.

POSCO has also been waging the “1 Percent Love Sharing Campaign” to do its duty as a member of the local community under which all employees of POSCO and its affiliates donate 1 percent of their monthly salaries to economically isolated people in the local community so that they can overcome their difficulties. The campaign was kicked off by top executives of the steelmaker and its affiliates led by Chairman Chung in October 2011, but it now has progressed enough to the point where a large number of staff from both POSCO and its affiliates have joined the campaign, including 94 percent of those who are team leaders and above.

“One of the major duties given to POSCO is to help nurture the children of multi-cultural households to be talented members of society,” said Chairman Chung in explaining why the steelmaker has been leading the campaign to provide support to those families.

POSCO should help to build a strong base for the children of multi-cultural families to grow up to be productive members of society with the talent to make the society stronger. The steelmaker has been providing support to joint wedding ceremonies for the children of those multi-cultural families and the foreign wives in Korea to be able to make trips to their native countries to call on their families back home. 

“POSCO should have a global corporate culture to help its global operations in various countries around the world in order to succeed,” said Chairman Chung.