Samsung’s voluntary commuting system to allow 4 hours per day

“Samsung Elec. to allow employees to work 4 hours per day company-wide” http://news.mk.co.kr/english/newsRead.php?sc=30800006&cm=English%20News_&year=2013&no=917458&selFlag=&relatedcode=&wonNo=&sID=308 From October 1, Samsung expands its four-hour flexible working system company-wide. In Samsung, they call this system ‘Voluntary commuting system’. This system allows employees to work 4 hour per day under the condition that they fulfill 40 working hours per week. In previous system, workers had to work at least 8 hours a day. Therefore, you can schedule your working hours more flexibly with new system. For example, if you have a personal thing to do in Friday, you can work more in Monday to Thursday and work only 4 hours in Friday.
Samsung has been testing this system in DMC R&D Center in Suwon and semiconductor R&D Institute in Hwaseong. They are going to select the first group of workers who are going to be beneficial from this policy among their staff in R&D or design at all divisions including mobile, home appliance, TV, etc. Consequently the number of workers subject to the system will increase from 5,000 to 10,000. They are planning to expand the system company-wide.
The reason why Samsung adopts such an experimental system is to boost the creativity. They are expecting that flexible working condition will increase the creative thinking of their employees. Of course there are some worries regarding the side-effect of the system, so the company concluded that by letting employees work when they are highly productive, overall productivity can be increased much more.
Experts are interpreting this Samsung’s system change as a attempt to be the first mover. They are currently well-known for their fast chaser position. Samsung is also considering erasing the requirement of minimum 40 hours of