Instead of working from home, print workers chose to live at work

Mar 28, 2020 at 10:01 pm by Staff


While many are addressing COVID-19 challenges by working from home, production staff at a Korean publisher are making work their 'home'.

In an INMA post, JoongAng Ilbo chief executive Changhee Park tells how the South Korean media company's production team has quarantined itself inside its Daegu plant, while extraordinary measures are being taken to protect Seoul employees.

"At least the first round of panic is over," he says, as the rate of increase in confirmed patients starts to fall. "We have succeeded in flattening the COVID-19 curve."

Fear related to the coronavirus climaxed at the end of February, when nearly 1000 confirmed cases a day were being reported, among them a religious group and a nursing home in Daegu, which is Korea's third largest city with nearly 2.5 million people.

JoongAng Ilbo - established in Seoul in 1965 - is best known for its 20-year-old daily which has a circulation of 700,000 and a strong digital footprint and a reputation as a news brand of record, the English-language world's 'window to Korea'.

In Daegu - one of JoongAng Ilbo's four major production plants - a single case of infection would have meant having to shut down the entire facility. The company focussed on minimising the likelihood of infection among workers, maintaining the utmost business efficiency, and ensuring sustainability by not overloading the system.

Park says commuting would have exposed workers to the risk of infection: "Dozens of newspapers which had entrusted their printing to JoongAng Ilbo were depending on us," he says. "Then we heard that every single employee at Daegu had decided not to go home, but to isolate themselves at the printing facility, avoiding the possibility of infection by eliminating the process of commuting.

"Instead of working from home, they chose to live at work."

The publisher provided "all the necessities" for the temporary measure, including individual tents for all 24 employees at the plant, turning it into a makeshift campsite.

Changhee Park says the value of the scheme was brought home when the wife and daughter of one of the employees tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks later. "If that employee had commuted from home, he could have picked up the virus, resulting in the shutdown of the entire printing facility."

JoongAng Ilbo teams in Seoul were protected by first checking the temperatures of everyone entering the building, insisting that everyone wore face masks, covering lift buttons with antivirus film, and taking extra care in cleaning and disinfecting the building. "Nobody with an abnormal temperature is allowed to enter JoongAng Ilbo offices," he says. "We had to be prepared for the worst but at the same time, work was work."

A compromise for teams which had to work from the office, was to have half coming in, and taking turns with half working from home. Newspaper editing teams who had to work from the office were divided into two teams working in two separate locations.

"However, efforts to minimise the risk of transmission were not enough," Park says. "Our goal could not be 100 per cent remote production as that would mean giving up on the quality and efficiency of the newspaper production process."

Anticipating a shortage of protective face masks - which became a luxury item with soaring prices - JoongAng Ilbo bought 20,000 of them early on and distributed them to all employees.

"Given the seriousness of the crisis, some would say the masks were even more welcome than a pay raise - a crucial ration item offering psychological comfort to employees."

Park says Seoul now faces the second wave of the crisis. "We were lucky that none of our 3,400 employees were infected. Advertising revenue, which fell ten per cent short of our first quarter target, should be recoverable if business gets back on track in the second half, assuming everything is under control by the latter half of the year."

But he says such a recovery seems far from easy. "We may have to get used to the 'new normal' of living alongside the virus.

"A prolonged lockdown around the world may paralyse global systems, which would strike a fatal blow to the survival of the media industry. It is difficult to fathom how detrimental such a blow would be.

"Therefore, gearing up for a long, protracted war against the coronavirus is inevitable. Cash-focussed management is essential, so we prioritised projects based on revenue creation. On the other hand, we are developing customised marketing strategies in anticipation of retaliatory consumption post-COVID-19.

"Our role as a quality stabiliser, informing our readers of what is truth and what will be beneficial in the long term is still our top priority."

Changhee Park is optimistic for the future, with Seoul "surprisingly calm", and experience of attitudes in Daegu - then facing an explosive rise in the number of confirmed cases - benefitting from doctors and nurses who rushed from around the country to treat the infected, and citizens mostly staying put.

He says the tone of the 'Korea, Wonderland?' video might seem too emotional, but believes there is no denying the outpouring of emotion as all came together to overcome this unprecedented crisis.

• Changhee Park is chief executive officer of Joongang Ilbo, based in Seoul, South Korea. He can be reached at park.changhee@joongang.co.kr. He is a former member of the INMA board of directors. Based on an INMA post with permission

Pictured: Makeshift tents inside the Daegu production plant served as homes for production workers;

Nobody with an abnormal temperature is allowed to enter the offices, with cameras automatically measuring individual temperatures;

Antivirus film was placed inside lifts, as research showed buttons were carriers of germs generally; the film also is easier to clean

Sections: Print business

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