It was in 2005 when “friendly” service was required from university administration. Universities started organizing kindness education programs for administrative employees, and a real-name system was introduced in which employees were required to identify themselves with their name and position when receiving calls.
Ewha has also been taking part in the effort to improve school services by receiving help from external businesses until recently, when the school decided to take the issue into their own hands.
Starting this school year, the Office of General Administration (OGA)  has placed emphasis on the quality improvement of administrative services and is working to systematically educate and monitor employees. It started with the Administrative Employee Kindness Education on May, in which 400 teaching and service official assistants received basic education on how to handle incoming service requests. This was then followed by an education session that took place in June and July where 250 employees received education.
Also, starting last semester, a group of students conducted evaluations about administrative services through the Campus Administration Service Student Monitoring program.
However, despite these efforts by the school, glitches in the attitude of employees are constantly being exposed.
It was at a Hangul Proclamation Day ceremonial event held for a week where an unpleasant scene unfolded. Students from various nationalities studying Korean were invited to Korea, and an Ewha affiliate institution supervised the event.
On the day of the event, an official from the Ewha institution was spotted intimidating a student with her authority, stating offensive remarks. This was at the Lee San-Bong Hall, and because the Ewha official was talking in a rough voice, everyone in the room including invited students, the officials in charge of the event and other Ewha employees under the supervising institution could hear everything. An awkward silence filled the room.
This student who was being hassled was not one of the invited foreign students, but part time worker of a product team. Whoever it was does not matter, the issue is that an Ewha official was losing her temper in front of a large crowd.
The student, who was in fact an Ewha student, was publicly humiliated. To make matters worse, the foreign students who were most probably looking forward to having an enjoyable time in Korea were left with puzzled looks on their faces.
This official’s actions only brought disgrace to Ewha’s image.
I am not saying that all Ewha’s administrative employees are aggressive as such, but the fact is that an erroneous action of one person is strong enough to shatter the image of an entire group.
It may be because it is only the first year Ewha organizing such in-depth examination into service qualities of administrative offices at Ewha, but there still seems to be a great more work to be done to improve the overall attitude of administrative employees.
The OGA says that it will conduct a thorough examination of employees and services through the CASSM, recognizing excelling offices that receive high scores on the evaluation and requesting improvement methods from offices that have scored low.
It is crucial that the OGA take a closer look at the “problematic” administrative offices and monitor them until all offices have satisfying service quality.
The best way to prove that services have improved is to decrease the number of  discomforts ecountered by Ewha students when using administrative services.
저작권자 © Ewha Voice 무단전재 및 재배포 금지