IKEA Korea Selected as ‘Top 100 Companies as Great Place to Work’

Established in 2018, the ’Top 100 Companies as Great Place to Work’ is a system created by the Ministry of Employment and Labor to acknowledge and encourage both public and private entities to boost employment, and in particular, expand quality jobs. This year, 100 companies have been selected in recognition of their efforts to maintain job stability, reduce turnover rates, encourage work-life balance, hire women, senior citizens and people with disabilities, create new jobs and particularly provide job opportunities for young people.

IKEA sees all co-workers as talents, thereby providing people with a passion for home furnishing with the possibility to grow, both as individuals and in their professional roles. Also, as a humanistic company, IKEA believes that everyone has the right to be treated equally, providing equal opportunities to all co-workers, regardless of their background. IKEA offers same working conditions and benefit package for all co-workers regardless of contractual hours or contract types.

In particular, with ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ embedded in IKEA’s vision and values, IKEA believes that co-workers’ differences make IKEA great. Thus, IKEA strives to have a diverse, inclusive work environment where everybody is respected regardless of age, gender identity, physical ability or any other dimension of their identity.

In 2017 IKEA Korea recruited approximately 700 new co-workers, among whom 58.7% were women. In addition, IKEA has flexible working hours that allows co-workers to choose from 16, 20, 25, 28, 32 working hours a week. IKEA’s benefits also includes DAGIS, a day-care centre for the co-workers’ children, 30 days of paid paternity leave, and many more to encourage all the co-workers to balance work and life. To work with diverse people of different ages, IKEA prolonged the retirement age of co-workers to 65 and is committed to providing equal opportunities to people with physical disabilities and create an inclusive workplace regardless of one’s physical abilities.

André Schmidtgall, IKEA Korea Country Retail Manager said, “IKEA’s vision is “to create a better everyday life for the many people”, and this means we also aim to improve the lives of our co-workers,” adding, “We will continue our efforts to meet the diverse lifecycles of our co-workers and support a healthy work-life balance.”

Meanwhile, IKEA Korea was also selected as the best company for gender equality in employment, receiving the Korean Presidential Unit Citation in 2017 for its efforts to provide equal employment opportunities to men and women alike.