This image is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]
This image is unrelated to the article. [Getty Images Bank]

The government has moved to scale up a reduced working-hours model tailored to healthcare settings.

After a four-day workweek pilot at Severance Hospital showed significant drops in nurse turnover and physical burnout, the government plans to hold it up as a flagship case under its "Work-Life Balance+4.5 Project" and support healthcare institutions in voluntarily cutting working hours.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor said Thursday that Minister Kim Young-hoon visited Severance Hospital in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, toured a ward running the four-day workweek pilot, and held a roundtable with hospital management, labor representatives and experts. Discussions covered reducing actual working hours in the hospital sector, protecting the health of night-shift workers, preventing workplace harassment — typified by the nursing culture known as "taeoom" — and options for managing substitute staff and government support.

Severance Hospital agreed to pilot the four-day workweek through a 2022 collective bargaining agreement and launched the program in 2023 across three wards at Severance Hospital and Gangnam Severance Hospital. The program has since expanded in stages and now operates across six wards, including those at Yongin Severance Hospital. Nurses who opt in work 32 hours over four days in six-month rotating cycles, with additional substitute staff assigned to each ward to maintain continuity of care and minimize coverage gaps.

The results have been significant. The resignation rate among nurses with fewer than three years of experience fell 12.5 percentage points, from 19.5 percent to 7.0 percent, while the physical burnout score dropped nearly half, from 79.7 to 40.1. The share of nurses who came to work despite being ill — a phenomenon known as presenteeism — fell from 86.4 percent to 55.2 percent, and sick-day usage declined from 3.05 days to 2.2 days. Meanwhile, work-life balance satisfaction rose from 3.7 to 6.2 points and job satisfaction climbed from 50.2 to 60.3 points, suggesting that adequate rest has had a positive effect on long-term retention and workplace culture.

The hospital said, however, that the additional labor costs of deploying substitute staff make it difficult to sustain the program on its own funding alone, and called on the government to provide fiscal support for substitute staffing and introduce new fee incentives within the healthcare reimbursement system.

"Healthcare is directly tied to people's lives, so it is vital that we build a working environment where healthcare workers can stay healthy while keeping patient safety and quality of care as the top priority," Kim said. "Severance Hospital's case is a meaningful example showing that it is possible to reduce actual working hours through labor-management cooperation while also improving the quality of medical services."

He added that the ministry would work with the Ministry of Health and Welfare to directly support healthcare workplaces through initiatives including the Work-Life Balance+4.5 Project, helping them develop voluntary working-hours reduction models suited to their own conditions. Kim also pledged to promote harassment prevention and a healthier workplace culture through workplace innovation consulting and labor education programs.


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