Hanwha Aerospace (012450) issued a formal apology over a controversy surrounding internal guidelines for mid-career hiring. The company said the episode stemmed from misconduct by individual human resources staff but pledged to put safeguards in place to prevent a recurrence.
Lee Boo-hwan, chief executive of Hanwha Aerospace, posted the apology on the company website on Sept. 27. "As a company that must fulfill its social responsibility through fair hiring, it should never have happened that guidelines were drawn up containing content that could limit applicants' opportunities based on personal attributes unrelated to job performance, such as educational background and age," Lee said.
Hanwha Aerospace had faced allegations that it drafted hiring guidelines specifying particular universities and age ranges while recruiting mid-career employees. The Ministry of Employment and Labor opened an inspection on the 16th into allegations that the company created the guidelines and sent them to HR executives and recruiting managers at each business division.
In the apology, Lee said the conduct "directly undermined the basic principles of open hiring and fair opportunity that Hanwha Aerospace has pursued," adding that the company is "taking this matter very seriously."
"This was a clear error in which flawed guidelines were distributed to working teams without internal consultation or close review," he said. "We will issue stern warnings and disciplinary action against the departments and officials who established and distributed the guidelines."
The company's position is that the matter originated in misconduct by HR staff. Hanwha Aerospace has referred the official responsible for drafting the guidelines to its personnel committee and is proceeding with disciplinary steps.
The company said it will closely review its hiring processes and overhaul them entirely if problems are found. It also plans to strengthen fair-hiring training for all employees to establish a recruiting culture free of discrimination.
"Fair hiring is the most basic form of justice and duty a company owes to society," Lee said. "We will take this as a painful lesson and manage our processes so that unreasonable discrimination like this never happens again."
