Global Strategy Meetings to be Held Once This Year
Samsung Electronics has canceled or scaled back exchange programs with its overseas affiliates in the wake of the spread of COVID-19.
The company said the Global Strategy Meetings will be reduced from twice a year (June and December) to once this year. The meetings are a conference where executives of the company's operations at home and abroad gather together to share their views and set up future strategies. This year, the meeting will be held once in the second half.
Until last year, the meetings had been jointly held by the company's three divisions -- the Consumer Electronics (CE), Internet and Mobile (IM), and DS (Device Solution) Divisions. Yet this year, the first-half meeting was left to each division.
Among the three divisions, the CE Division alone held a global strategy meeting in the first half. Executives from both domestic and overseas operations, including division head Kim Hyun-suk, held a video conference in March.
On the other hand, the IM and DS Divisions did not hold separate meetings in the first half of the year.
Samsung Electronics has also canceled this year's skill competition where employees from around the world participate to demonstrate their skills.
The annual event, which has been held since 2008, is an in-house competition in which engineers from Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, and Samsung SDI who have been dispatched to Asia, South America and Europe come back to Korea to compete to become technology masters. In 2019, 170 employees from 26 corporations in 12 countries including China, Vietnam, and Russia, participated.
Meanwhile, Samsung Group has canceled the local expert cultivation program in which the group's affiliates send employees overseas to foster them as local experts.
This is the second time since the 1998 foreign exchange crisis that Samsung has suspended the employee training program. Some local experts who need to return from overseas are also reportedly extending their stay as their replacements have trouble flying. Some worry that if the COVID-19 crisis continues into 2021, it will disrupt the local expert training program, a key initiative that has made Samsung a global company.