KEB Hana Bank is slated to officially open its new building Gran Seoul in Cheongjin-dong, downtown Seoul. The offices and desks in the new building will be arranged similar to those of start-ups in that will be for joint use, not necessarily assigned to individuals. Even managers will not be given offices.
The unprecedented workspace arrangement at the new head office of the bank was ordered by President Ham Young-joo, who wanted a “horizontal” working environment to create an atmosphere for new creative ideas to move the bank forward among officers and staff. According to financial authorities, the bank will move into the 26-storey new building on July 21. The first to move in will be the units that used the old KEB building in Euljiro, Seoul, and the entire workforce at the Jonggak branch in Jongro 1-ga in downtown Seoul.
They will share desks, computers and other office equipment like they do at start-ups. Employees will have to sit at any desk open at the time they come to the office, and also jointly use computers and other office equipment. Manager-level officers will be no exception, as they won’t have their own offices assigned. No one can occupy the same desk for three days in a row and if they do, they won’t be able to use the same phones, as the phone numbers will be changed with new numbers. They will share computers with others. All computer records will be stored in the company’s Cloud Storage System. They can access their files from anywhere, even overseas, as they are stored in the Cloud Storage System.
Sixty-five managers will share computers with others, including regular staff, according to the bank. Some 19 square meters in office space was saved by getting rid of offices for individual managers.
KEB Hana Bank will move department offices in its current headquarters to the new Gran Seoul building in Cheongjindong as part of its headquarters reconstruction project, with offices reopening in June.
The Bank’s headquarters in Euljiro 1-ga will be rebuilt into a new 26-floor building shaped like the number “1” with six floors underground. The transfer of department offices located in the headquarters began in May last year and will be completed by mid-June this year. KEB Hana Bank installed an ATM on the first floor of the Gran Seoul building and situated the Main Business 1 Dept. on the third floor and the Jungang Corporate Banking Center on the fifth floor, with other offices dispersed between the 18th (partial) and 24th floors.
These offices will remain in the Gran Seoul until 2017, when construction of the new building is scheduled to be completed. Furthermore, the Bank installed a local office of the Sales 1 Division on the first floor of the Hana-SK Card headquarters building (located near the Bank’s Euljiro headquarters building) in order to minimize customer inconvenience.
In celebration of the old headquarters building, which has served the bank well throughout its growth and development, KEB Hana Bank held a photograph exhibition on the first floor of its headquarters until the end of May. The exhibition displayed some 30 photographs that showed the Bank’s various milestones throughout its history. It also collected books from each department, in conjunction with the move, and donated them to a social welfare organization.
Once all of the offices in the old headquarters building have been relocated, construction of the new building will begin in July, and is scheduled to be completed by 2017. The south side of the new building will be designed in the shape of the number “1,” symbolizing the Bank’s goal of becoming Korea’s No. 1 bank, and the east side of the building will be built in the shape of an anchor, representing the Bank’s determination to “navigate the world,” its goal of going global. The building itself will demonstrate the Bank’s image as Korea’s best bank and its corporate vision as a “Reliable and Leading Global Bank.”
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