"Let's move Wednesdays to remote starting this month." Plenty of teams change how people work with a single Slack announcement or a verbal agreement in a meeting. In the 10-to-30-person stage, execution speed tends to outrank process, so work arrangement changes get treated as operational calls.
The problem is that under Korean labor law a change in work arrangement is a change to employment conditions. If you change attendance rules without documenting them, the company loses the ground it would need later when overtime calculation or working-hour standards come into dispute.
When the rules and paperwork are not updated to match the actual practice, nothing happens day to day. The gap surfaces all at once when a situation requires reviewing past work history — a severance calculation, or an overtime claim.
Disputes usually start in one of two places. Either the way people work changed but the change was never reflected in the rules of employment, leaving documents and practice contradicting each other. Or a scheme like flexible working hours, which only takes legal effect with a written agreement, was operated without one — putting the entire period's working-hour calculation up for review, often ending in retroactive overtime claims.
Remote work, flexible working hours and staggered start times get grouped together as "flexible work," but the required procedures differ.
Work location is not a mandatory item in the rules of employment. If only the location changes and wages, working hours and other conditions stay the same, individual consent from the affected employees is sufficient. If it becomes a permanent, recurring arrangement, writing the remote policy into the rules of employment is the safer position.
This requires a basis in the rules of employment plus a written agreement with the employee representative. That agreement must specify scope, settlement period (one month or less as a rule), total working hours, core time, flexible time bands and standard working hours. Missing any mandatory item can invalidate the agreement itself.
Because contractual daily hours (eight) stay intact and only start and end times shift, a separate written agreement is not mandated. But if the arrangement is not written into the rules of employment and the employment contract, the starting point for overtime calculation becomes easy to dispute.
Do not assume an unclear item means "no requirement." Confirm with a labor law advisor based on headcount and the scope of conditions being changed.
Even with the paperwork complete, these are the steps that get skipped at execution.
First, rules of employment take effect only after filing. Announcing internally and running the new scheme before filing can make "operation before formal amendment" the issue in a dispute. Follow the sequence — amend, collect opinions (or consent), file, post — and keep a record of the filing date. The obligation to draft and file rules of employment applies to workplaces with 10 or more regular employees under Article 93 of the Labor Standards Act, but individual documents like consent forms and written agreements are required regardless of headcount.
Second, who signs the flexible-hours agreement decides whether it holds. Without a majority union, the agreement must be with a person representing a majority of employees. If the employer unilaterally designates that representative, representativeness can be denied — so keep records of the selection process, whether by vote or show of hands.
Third, the obligation is delivery, not drafting. Article 17 of the Labor Standards Act requires core conditions — wages, contractual hours, holidays, annual leave — to be stated in writing and delivered to the employee. This applies not only at initial hiring but equally when conditions change, and electronic documents qualify. Drafting a new contract without delivering it can constitute a violation subject to fines. Related documents should generally be retained for three years.
Even with rules and contracts in order, disputes go badly when there is no record of how things actually ran. If who worked under which arrangement, and how changes and approvals happened, is scattered across systems, it cannot be proven.
Four things need to live in one place: per-employee work arrangement settings, working-hour, overtime, night and holiday calculations derived from attendance records, approval history for requests like remote work days, and an approval flow for edits to attendance records. Only then can you trace who changed what, when, and why.
The structure mirrors onboarding. As in why onboarding still scrambles even with a checklist, having the "what" without the "when" and "who" means the document exists and the process does not. Templates alone do not make a work arrangement policy function.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Application varies by workplace, so confirmation from a labor law professional is recommended.
If only work location changes while wages, working hours and other conditions stay the same, individual consent from those employees is sufficient. Once the group grows or the arrangement becomes permanent, codifying it in the rules of employment is safer.
One month as a general rule, extendable to three months only for new product or new technology R&D work. Periods exceeding one month trigger additional obligations, including 11 consecutive hours of rest between working days and premium pay on excess hours.
There are limits to legitimizing a past period after the fact. The recommended approach is to fix the rules of employment, written agreement and employment contract going forward, reconstruct attendance and approval records as completely as possible, and take labor law advice.
No. Article 17 of the Labor Standards Act requires core conditions to be stated in writing and delivered to the employee, and this applies equally when conditions change — such as a change in work arrangement. Drafting without delivery can constitute a violation subject to fines.
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