Game company Krafton holds’Krafton Live Talk’ every month. It is an on-offline internal communication program. Chairman of Krafton’s Board of Directors Jang Byung-gyu and CEO Kim Chang-han explain the company’s pending issues. Management also answers questions from employees. On the 25th, CEO Kim grabbed the microphone. CEO Kim announced that “the annual salary for the development workers will be increased by 20 million won”. On this day, Blind’s game lounge (a bulletin board that can be seen by all the company’s office workers), an anonymous community service for office workers, rose in an instant. ‘Wow!’ Posts such as’Unconventional’,’Envy’ and’What is our company?’ were poured out.
○Crafton, unprecedented annual salary increase
The information technology (IT) industry, as well as the economy and industry, are struggling with the unprecedented salary increase of Krafton, famous for’Battleground’. This is because there is a large gap from the recently announced increase of 8 to 10 million won in the game industry, and it can emerge as a’big trend’ that will hit the industry in that it is a’revolutionary’ level that will stimulate competitors.
On this day, Krafton announced that it would raise annual salaries of 20 million won and 15 million won respectively for the development (engineer) and non-development workers this year. The starting salary for new recruits was set at 60 million won for developers and 50 million won for non-developers. It surpasses not only the game industry but also major domestic companies. According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the average annual salary of a new white-collar worker at a large corporation with 500 or more employees last year was 3,347 million won. The starting salary for a new employee at Samsung Electronics is about 46.7 million won.
○ MZ generation united in blinds
The announcement of unprecedented welfare by leading IT companies is spreading like a domino. Earlier, Nexon, Netmarble, Com2uS, and Gameville raised the annual salary of all employees by 8 million won. Naver, which has been providing stock options worth 10 million won to all employees every year since 2019, also decided to pay stock options on the 24th. Kakao announced on the 8th that it will offer 10 shares of treasury stock to all employees as a bonus for the first time since its establishment.
On the surface, the internal sharing of the record-high performance is the background for the dramatic increase. It is said that the good performance of non-face-to-face industries such as games and internet triggered by Corona 19 makes it easier for management to make aggressive decisions. It is estimated that Krafton, an unlisted company, raised sales of 2 trillion won last year, making an operating profit of about 1 trillion won. The calculation of proactively preventing talent churn is also implied. An official from the game industry said, “With the recent boom in the internet industry,’developer Shortage’ appears, and IT companies are struggling to improve the treatment of developers.” He explained.
In the industry, there are many views that interpret this movement as a strategy for securing talents of the’MZ generation (millennial generation + generation Z born after 1995)’. It is said that it is an encouraging policy to manage employees who are more sensitive to rational compensation for performance than the previous generation who relied on the struggle. Kim Yong-hee, a professor of business administration at Soongsil University, analyzed that “MZ generation wants immediate compensation for individual efforts.”
The characteristics of MZ generation who share information related to wages and company welfare in real time through SNS are also playing a role. An official in the internet industry said, “The company news spreads in near real time through blind and KakaoTalk, an anonymous employee community service.”
○ IT heads of’new communication management’
Management’s communication method is also rapidly changing to’open type’, which is rare in previous generations. The scenery in which company founders and representatives directly communicate with employees is a landscape that is no longer unfamiliar to the IT industry. Even founders who were perceived as reclusive managers have natural communication at eye level. One of them is Kim Taek-jin, the owner of NCsoft. CEO Kim regularly delivers company news through an in-house broadcast called’I&M (Innovation & Management)’. Questions are also asked anonymously in real time.
Naver founder Lee Hae-jin, Global Investment Officer (GIO) and Kakao founder Kim Beom-soo, also stood in front of the staff on this day. This is to directly explain the recently raised incentive payment standards and controversy over personnel evaluation. Chairman Kim said, “If we can move forward to a better culture through communication, this meeting today will be very meaningful.” When there is a problem with the company, even the founder goes directly to the labor union, so there is less dispute between labor unions and labor-management conflicts.
Reporter Juwan Kim/Minki Gu [email protected]