April 23, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] For employees who enjoy their privacy, the tarps are a must at Coupang‘s new headquarters in Seoul. The Korean e-commerce company has no partitions between the desks, and employees are free to roam about the building with their laptops in hand, working wherever they feel most motivated.

“The complete openness isn’t for everybody,” an official with Coupang told The Korea Herald on a tour of the offices located at Tower 730 in southeastern Seoul.

Coupang employees chat at one of the company‘s meeting spaces at Coupang headquarters in Songpa-gu, Seoul. Coupang

Few office chairs were actually occupied although there were coats and bags draped over their backs.

“They‘re all probably working at the cafe or in one of the meeting rooms,” the official explained.

For Coupang employees, there are plenty of places to go: in addition to the forty-odd meeting rooms on the 18th floor used for meetings, interviews and presentations, each floor is filled with tables and benches where employees can freely sit and chat. On the northern side of the building, each floor‘s floor-to-ceiling windows offer a spectacular view of the Han River.

Next to the elevator on each floor is an open lounge with sofas, tables and TVs constantly flashing Coupang’s mottos such as “Wow the Customer.”

“The open lounges are placed next to the elevators because everyone has to walk by here to get to their desks,” the Coupang official said. “It‘s almost coercive, how the layout of the offices pushes employees together for impromptu chats.”

And such space is essential for the company’s open ideas, which have been at core of its business strength.

There’s a good reason behind the emphasis on employee interaction. Some of Coupang‘s most popular services, such as the one-touch payment solution Rocket Pay and Coupang’s brutally honest product review system, were born in these unplanned conversations.

Taking a cue from Silicon Valley, Coupang‘s offices have adopted the idea that great ideas can strike at any time. Nearly all of the walls double as whiteboards, with markers and erasers placed strategically throughout the offices.

To facilitate conversations between employees at all levels, Coupang does not use the typical system of addressing colleagues according to their rank. Instead, employees use their English names or nicknames.

“Since we use nicknames, there is a lot less pressure to agree to ideas proposed by more senior employees,” said the official. “We recognize that the best ideas can come from anywhere, and our organization does what it can in order to make sure none of those ideas are lost.” 

By Won Ho-jung/The Korea Herald (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)