What is a Company Rule?

What is the Employment Rules in Korea?

It refers to the rules that the employer unilaterally drafts regarding working conditions and disciplinary rules in the employment relationship between the company and employees, and applies to all employees.

The name of these employment rules does not necessarily have to be 'Employment Rules'. As long as it contains the contents related to company rules or working conditions, the form of the name is not considered.

Therefore, it doesn't matter if the name is set as 'Company Internal Rules', 'OOO's Business Manual', or 'OOO's Employment Regulations'.

Mandatory Requirements

• If there are 10 or more regular employees, the employer must draft employment rules and report them to the Minister of Employment and Labor. (Article 93 of the Labor Standards Act)
• The location standard for drafting employment rules should be considered at the business site level. However, depending on the type of business, even if there are 9 or fewer employees in multiple business sites, if the total number of employees is 10 or more, they are obligated to draft the rules.
  • Furthermore, within one business site, it is possible to separate manual laborers and office workers and create separate employment rules for each, or they can be drafted collectively. In other words, if you want to provide special treatment to some employees, you can apply different employment rules (by job category, by task, etc.).

Fine for Non-Reporting

If you fail to report the employment rules, a fine of up to 5 million won will be imposed pursuant to Article 116, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 2 of the Labor Standards Act.

• Of course, someone needs to report to the Ministry of Employment and Labor that the employment rules are missing for the fine to be imposed. In most cases, it's an internal employee or a departing employee who reports.

Matters to be Included

• The matters that must be included in the employment rules are divided into mandatory requirements and optional requirements.
• Mandatory Requirements: Article 93 of the Labor Standards Act stipulates 12 items.
• Optional Requirements: Any matter can be included as long as it does not violate laws or collective agreements.

Obtaining Employee Opinions

The authority to draft and amend the employment rules is, in principle, vested in the employer. Therefore, unless otherwise specified in a collective agreement or labor-management council, the employer can create or amend them independently.

Effective Date and Commencement

The company is obligated to post or keep the employment rules at each business site to inform the employees. (Article 14 of the Labor Standards Act)

• When they are informed in this way, the rules become effective.
• However, in cases of disadvantageous amendments, the consent of the employees collectively must be obtained for the rules to become effective. If the employment rules explicitly state the effective date, it is determined accordingly.

Even if the procedures such as obtaining employee opinions are not followed, the rules are still valid. (Supreme Court Precedent, May 9, 1989, 88DaKa4277)

How to Register Employment Rules

In the past, the only method was to send it by mail to the local district office, but now you can submit initial and change reports online.

1. Access the Ministry of Employment and Labor's Citizen's Portal.

2. Click on [Citizen's Petition] → [Form Petition].

3. Search for [Employment Rules] in the search bar. If it's an initial report, click [Apply] in the [Employment Rules Report Form] section.

4. If it's a change report, click [Apply] in the [Employment Rules Change Report Form] section.

5. You need to log in. If you haven't registered, create an account and proceed.

6. Most parts are easy to fill out, but the 'Type of Business' can be confusing. Enter the main 'item' found on your business registration certificate. For us, it's 'System Software Development and Supply'.

7. In 'Number of Employees', enter the total number of employees in 'Total'. If there are union members, enter the number. In "Female [ ]", enter the number of female employees.

8. At first, I also wondered what 'Female' meant, but the paper application form requires the number of male and female employees separately.

Required Documents (3)

There are 3 required documents.

• Employment Rules
• Hearing Record that proves more than half of the employees' opinions were heard
• Consent Form that proves more than half of the employees' consent was obtained (This is submitted when making unfavorable changes to the employees, but not for new submissions)

The required documents can be a bit tricky. When I searched online, only hwp files were available, which requires installing the HWP program, which is inconvenient. Therefore, I'm sharing a Google Docs link on Google Drive.

[File] → [Make a copy]Edit it and then save it as a PDF file for submission.

Google Drive Link (Click here)

Also, regarding the Employment Rules, I'm attaching the standard version created by the Ministry of Employment and Labor in April 2022. So, refer to the content on the right side and modify it on the left. Then, copy the content on the left and paste it into a new Google document. After editing that Google document, convert it to a PDF and submit it.