Summary

KIHASA has released a brief on mental health policies for customer-facing workers in Korea. The research highlights the need for practical assistance in promoting workers' mental health and emphasizes the importance of early intervention and employer involvement. Some of the policy recommendations made by the study include regular screenings of workers' mental health, workplace mental health services, and increased monitoring of existing worker protection laws.

KIHASA has released the Health and Welfare Issue & Focus, No. 436, "The Current State of Mental Health Promotion Policies for Customer-facing Workers in Korea and Lessons Drawn from Overseas Guidelines and Policy Cases." The lead researcher is Kim Soo-kyung, an Associate Research Fellow at the Department of Health Care Policy Research.

According to Dr. Kim, there is a growing social demand to promote workers' health and create a health-friendly work environment. She says the government's recently announced 2nd Basic Plan for Mental Health and Welfare, aka the Comprehensive Measures for the Mental Health of All Nationals, is significant in that it expands the policy targets from the previously defined mentally ill and high-risk groups to the entire population. The plan also emphasizes the importance of early intervention for mental health problems by viewing the point of intervention not as 'when severe psychiatric problems occur,' but as 'when mental health services are deemed necessary,' Dr. Kim said.

Kim says that customer-facing workers experience a range of mental health challenges due to the emotional nature of their labor, including stress, depression, and burnout. She says, "In particular, the verbal abuse, physical violence, and sexual harassment experienced by private-sector salespeople and call-center workers, as well as their poor working environments, have been an ongoing social concern for the past decade. These workers are mentioned whenever the issue of emotional labor comes up, and it is indeed urgent that a policy of mental health promotion for these workers be put in place."

"The Customer Service Worker Protection Act was enacted primarily to protect workers from certain risk factors, such as verbal abuse and physical violence from customers," says Kim, "What is needed now is an integrated and preventive mental health promotion approach that takes into account both mental health risk factors and protective factors." This article examines the current state of mental health promotion policies for customer-facing workers in Korea and makes policy recommendations based on comparisons with relevant guidelines and policy cases from overseas.

Main points of the brief:

• ■Customer-facing workers experience a range of mental health issues due to their emotional labor. There has been a law in effect since 2018 to protect them (aka the Customer Service Worker Protection Act).

• ■Policies targeting customer-facing workers in Korea fall short of providing practical assistance in promoting the mental health of these workers because, focusing mostly on reactive interventions such as counseling, they lack commitment to engaging employers to actively participate and make efforts, and to monitoring the implementation of the Customer Service Workers Protection Act.

• ■Relevant guidelines from international organizations emphasize the need to promote the mental health of workers, early intervention, and the role of employers. In developed countries, when implementing mental health policies for workers, labor, management, and the government work together, participating in the development and implementation of relevant policies and regulary conducting tests to measure the level of stress among workers.

• ■Policy recommendations based on the study's findings include conducting regular mental health screenings, providing mental health services in the workplace, strengthening monitoring of the Customer Service Worker Protection Act, increasing multisectoral cooperation, and increasing employer involvement and commitment.

Read the full English version of this issue, Research in Brief 2023-05 No. 110, "Mental Health Promotion Policies on Customer Service Workers in Korea and the Implications of International Organizations' Guidelines and Selected Countries' Policies," by clicking here.