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Inspiring Culture

We create a flexible and horizontal organizational culture that promotes movement to realize Kia’s ideal of "Movement that inspires."

Kia is striving to fundamentally change the organization’s way of thinking and acting, based on its new brand purpose, which was declared in 2021. With Kia’s Inspiring Culture, we share inspiration with colleagues, customers, and the rest of the world. Kia is pushing ahead with fundamental changes across the company to become "Agile, Flexible, Horizontal" in order to implement the Inspiring Culture.

1. Agile

a bold attempt,
quick execution

We focus on the essence (why) of work to respond quickly to change. The essence always starts with the customer, and we do not hesitate to act bold and quick enough from the customer's perspective.
We are continuously reminding ourselves of changes in business strategies through "Plan S," and are promoting "Business Transformation" to boldly and proactively respond to prospective fields of opportunities.
In addition, we have built a mobile remote work environment so that employees can work freely and quickly, regardless of time and place. In particular, we have established and operated a base office and an infrastructure that enables employees to perform work smoothly in the virtual work environment due to COVID-19, and improved the groupware as well as the mobile working environment through Microsoft Suites.

2. Flexible

creative approach,
challenging thinking

New inspiration begins with a thought that drastically breaks away from past practices and forms, thereby leading to bold attempts to change the world. Kia will promote original and creative thinking and create new experiences in the future.
Kia supports creative ideas through "Way to Inspiration" platform and encourages employees to actively explore ideas. In addition, we introduced a home-based education "Home Learn," providing employees with an opportunity to flexibly conduct virtual learning by breaking away from the existing collective education.
Our work environment, which values flexible thinking, serves as a cornerstone for the realization of Kia’s corporate culture, while also being highly relatable and appreciable to our employees

3. Horizontal

inclusive communication,
borderless collaboration

Only horizontal organizations enable agile movement and flexible thinking. Breaking away from the hierarchical culture that emphasized management and control, we will break down the barriers to communicate and collaborate more horizontally within different individuals or organizations. Kia measures respective employee’s psychological stability and team effectiveness through its corporate culture survey results and support them to boost. In this way, we are laying the foundation for realizing a company-wide inspiring culture. In addition, we have introduced the "growth system" to support self-regulated and constant learning for individuals in their own career development opportunities.
Employees are creating Kia’s horizontal culture based on various growth & career development opportunities. In fact, Kia’s various educational programs are receiving positive feedback from increasing number of employees.

Kia measures respective employee’s psychological stability and team effectiveness through its annual corporate culture and satisfaction survey results and support them to boost. In this way, we are laying the foundation for realizing a company-wide inspiring culture. In addition, we have introduced the "growth system" to support self-regulated and constant learning for individuals in their own career development opportunities. Employees are creating Kia’s horizontal culture based on various growth & career development opportunities. In fact, Kia’s various educational programs are receiving positive feedback from increasing number of employees.

Idea platform, Way to Inspiration

Kia’s "Way to Inspiration" is an always-on idea platform where employees may freely discuss ideas and get inspiration. Regardless of industry or rank, Kia executives and employees can offer and embrace unique ideas through the platform.

Culture Survey

(Unit: Ponints)

Culture Survey table
Item 2018 2019 2020
(Score change*)
Actively developing ideas 64.5 63.3 67.8
(+4.5%p)
Providing Mobile working environments 60.0 58.7 76.5
(+17.8%p)
Running diverse educational program 48.3 42.6 54.9
(+12.3%p)

* Score changes show the changes in positive response rates from the previous year (positive answer results)

Organizational effectiveness

In order to increase organizational effectiveness, Kia has continued its organizational development activities from the following three perspectives.

  1. How innovative and high-quality are the products and services produced by our organization?
  2. Do you have conviction to our company's management goals and are confident to achieve them?
  3. How committed are the members to the organization and how satisfied are they with their jobs?

We are carrying out activities to increase the effectiveness of not only the company as a whole, but also of each unit(e.g. Headquarters / Divisions / Business Unit / Teams).
There are three activities that the company promotes in common.

  1. Finding issues at the company level based on data and implementing improvement tasks directly from the organizational development team
  2. In-depth analysis reports are provided for each headquarter/division to support the change activities of the unit organization.
  3. As a result of performing a hierarchical regression analysis based on diagnostic data for three years (2019-2022),

Head leadership was identified as the most urgently needed area to improve employee engagement and satisfaction.
Therefore, we selected 236 leader support boards from 72 offices directly under Kia(composed of excellent talents and various classes), suggesting changes to the leaders, and reflecting this to improve the leadership of the department head and the organizational operation method of the department.

Organizational Development Promotion System

Cascading Structure

Enterprise - Kia Culture Survey → [Assignments] DOT → [Issue identification/in-depth diagnosis] ← [Suggestions for improvement] HQ Division - In-depth Analysis/Improvement → [Assignments] → [Issue identification/in-depth diagnosis] ← [Suggestions for improvement] Business Unit - Deep Analysis / Improvement → [Assignments] ← [Suggestions for improvement] Team - Implementation of change activities in team units

Main Activities

Enterprise
  • Company-wide organizational culture survey
  • Deriving and executing company-wide activity tasks
HQ Division
  • Identify issues based on culture survey results (HQs/divisions)
  • Cause analysis considering the characteristics of HQs/divisions
  • Identify tasks and carry out improvement activities
Business Unit
  • Business unit culture survey data analysis
  • Cause analysis considering the characteristics of business unit
  • Identify tasks and carry out improvement activities
Team
  • Conduct team organizational culture diagnosis, provide team-specific reports
  • Team unit organizational development activity (On the job session, customized workshop)

Customized organization development consulting

Customized organization development consulting
Improvement area Support Concept Necessary Period
Solve key issues
  • Customized in-depth diagnosis (member psychological state, horizontal communication, leadership, collaboration, organizational effectiveness, etc.)
  • Issue/Troubleshooting Workshop
  • Change suggestion and monitoring
Diagnosis and workshop (2-3 months)
Improving Leadership Behavior
  • In-depth Diagnosis (Quantitative & Qualitative)
  • Leader Counseling and Practice
  • Member engagement and change monitoring
Leader Counseling (4 months)
Improve organizational operations
  • Culture Map Diagnosis (Qualitative Diagnosis)
  • Leadership team session
  • Subsequent intervention design and monitoring
Leadership Team Organizational Development (4 months)