Recently, the government adopted a performance-based annual salary system. Some people agree with this policy, but some don’t.



A performance-based annual salary system is in effect in public offices and financial institutions. It is a different system from the step system that allocates salaries to employees by position and years of experience. The new system determines salary on the basis of an employee’s abilities and production, not rank. Labor unions are opposed to the policy, but people are generally in favor of it, as am I.

First, when the performance-based annual salary system starts, employees will work hard and do their best in the workplace. It can create competition between coworkers, which would make them work harder, and thus increase productivity and profit. Moreover, passionate and talented employees will receive rewards and benefits. It can also result in improved efficiency. Improvements in business will lead to increase in salaries as well as welfare level of employees.

Second, the performance-based annual salary system can decrease reckless management. There are so many provision of injustice and corruption in banks and public enterprises, because of before system. For example, high level employee get holiday pay and bonus secretly. So, all employees have to experience an unequal division of salary. However, the new system applies, importance of organizational level will be break. Then each salary will be paid as they work. Enterprises can achieve healthier business growth.

So, the performance-based annual salary system is the best way for workers to make money and for businesses to increase profit. Thanks to it, we can anticipate more fair and righteous societal structure, so it must continue.

●Opinion from a reader

Park Ji-hae (Major in Fashion Marketing, Keimyung University)

I agree with a performance-based annual salary system because it will motivate people to work effectively and efficiently. It will ignite a worker’s passion and improve the results of projects.

Most people don’t work alone, they work in places where there are other employees nearby. When people work on a project together, there may be someone who doesn’t do his part. This salary system will prevent this kind of situation and workers from being lazy.

Each worker will do his best on projects. Workers will unite to produce good work. As the saying goes, “All big changes start from small changes”. In other words, good projects will help institutions grow, so I support the performance-based annual salary system.




Recently, the government adopted a performance-based annual salary system. It is a wage system in which employees are paid based on their job performance. Before it was adopted, they were paid depending on their years of service, age, and position. It was adopted to develop the Korean economy by raising productivity in the workplace, but many people see it having a negative impact.

First, the performance-based annual salary system creates an excessively competitive and rigid work environment. If wages are determined only by individual job performance, employees will be selfish and focus only on their own work. Besides individual work, employees have to collaborate with their coworkers on some work like projects. When these projects are given, the salary system will make communication between members not go smoothly because they would focus only on their own work.

Second, evaluating job performance is difficult. It is very important to evaluate job performance objectively, especially with this system. To do this, an evaluation system that has fairness and transparency is needed, but the evaluation standards are not complete. Without any obvious solutions to this, unfair evaluations will occur based on the closeness of the relationship of the evaluator and employee.

Third, the government is forcing public institutions to adopt this system. When the government stated that they were going to adopt this system, they also said they will punish institutions that adopt it late. Because of opposing voices against this intrusion, the financial industry union and rail industry union started general strikes on September 23 and 27, respectively.

For these reasons, many citizens suffer from this new salary system. It is surprising that the Korean government adopted this system without considering the failures of this system in foreign countries. They should not have adopted this system because of the problems explained above.

●Opinion from a reader

Yu Hye-jeong (Major in Law, Andong University)

I think a performance-based annual salary system is a bad idea. At first, I thought it was good because everyone will get paid according to their work performance. Then, I learned that there is no fair system for evaluating work performance. If this system is enforced with unfair evaluations, many people will suffer from it. Also, the atmosphere of workplaces would get worse because of competing with each other. Therefore, Korea should not adopt this policy.