Nowadays when young people seek jobs, they have a more important thing on their minds than just salaries. It is the term 'Worabel', which may be unfamiliar to us. We might hear a conversation between young people that includes comments such as, 'company A’s salary is high but worabel is not good' and, 'company B offers a low salary, but the worabel is good'. We can know that the word 'Worabel' is used endlessly in their conversation. What is 'Worabel? Have you ever heard this word?

  'Worabel' is short for 'Work and Life Balance'. It means the boundary between work and daily life; that is, balance between life and work. Worabel is the best way to show the value of youth these days with 'YOLO' (you only live once).

  There are many reasons why 'Worabel' is important in Korea. First, the average working time per day is the longest among OECD member countries. What is more problematic is that the majority of company workers are loaded with too much work and frequent overtime. Many workers are already limp as a doll after overtime work.

  Second, PC messaging services and smart phone messaging like Kakao Talk make it easy to communicate with anyone and from anywhere. This means it is a matter of course to easily extend work after the official work hours are over. It shows that the balance between work and daily life is completely broken.

  Third, the biggest problem is the evaluation system, which puts pressure on outcome and unconditional competition. These three situations are examples of broken 'Worabel', and main reasons of the stress that workers are getting these days.

  When young people looked at preferences of corporations in the past, they paid the most attention to salaries. These days, young people focus more on 'Worabel'. In fact, according to a questionnaire asking about the salary and overtime work of companies, 65.5% of the respondents answered 'more than half the salary and low overtime work' and 22.8% of the respondents answered 'low salary and no overtime work'. (portal:www.saramin.co.kr), Most people try to compromise with their salary and time after work.

  Fortunately, this change in the perception of young people is changing the atmosphere of the job market. In particular, food and beverage companies are pursuing a remarkable change. Companies such as CJ, Hitejinro, Maeil and Ediya operate welfare policies for the Worabel of their employees.

  We didn’t know the effect until recently, but I think half of it is successful because these systems were created. I also think it's very desirable for companies to compete for employee welfare rather than only seeking and competing for profit. I hope that there will be more and more systematic welfare programs in the future, such as a balance between work and family life and evening time. In addition, not a nominal welfare program, but rather a program that employees can use comfortably.

L.L.F reporter Eun-young Kim