Korea Electric Power Corporation: 2024 BEST Award Winner, #13

South Korea's power sector is a dynamic marketplace that embraces the gamut of traditional and clean energy products for its growing customer base. As a prominent provider within that arena, the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) relies on a highly trained workforce to maintain its competitive strength.

Yet as it strives to compete, the company is experiencing discontentment within its ranks. Some of its 23,000 employees are demanding new forms of change-oriented leadership due to concerns over financial issues, postpandemic remote work policies, and a generational shift in corporate culture.

The talent development department addresses those concerns with a variety of initiatives, including a new leadership development strategy for mid- and senior-level managers. The three-month curriculum underscores competencies involving crisis management, remote and servant leadership, and internal-external collaboration. The program aligns with the 70-20-10 model and offers leadership solutions for immediate application. Elements include a new corporate education system that uses a diverse range of internal and external resources.

In addition, the TD team collaborates with universities to conduct professorial lectures and provide pathways for academic input into its in-house training programs. It has also hosted a global HR summit to share perspectives on major issues and trends in the TD field and benchmark practices, enabling a proactive response to changes in the global environment.

Another initiative addresses a longstanding impediment to workforce learning in general: the perception that engaging in learning equals downtime in work. The TD team also addressed employees' dissatisfaction with the top-down approach to education and standardized course content. It responded with a two-part initiative, Accumulated Time, that requires all participants to receive two hours of education per day, up to eight hours each week. In addition, the team developed and implemented a company-wide system to create a natural learning environment that could assure measurable skills accumulation.

Accumulated Time facilitates continual immersive learning within a new platform for sharing all learning activities conducted within the company. Employees can select workplace-related challenges or issues as learning tasks and learn collaboratively within study groups.

The results were immediate. About 725 study groups (involving more than 5,400 participants) engaged in the learning activities, which resulted in tangible outcomes, including the acquisition of patents and intellectual property, the development of new technologies and methodologies, participants' attainment of certificates, and the creation of manuals and textbooks by field personnel.

The initiative "successfully shifted the perception of learning from being a hindrance to work to being a productive activity contributing to organizational goals, as they were able to compare learning hours with other departments," says Jung-ho Lee, who heads the HR development team.

The payoff has been profound. "Since the introduction of the Accumulated Time program, a natural learning culture has developed within our company," Lee states. More than 8,900 learners have participated since the initiative's introduction, with nearly 30 percent of the organization currently engaged in learning.

The TD department plans to integrate the system with the organization's metaverse, enabling remote employees to freely create and participate in study groups and establish a learning platform that is not confined to location.

View the entire list of 2024 BEST Award winners.