🇰🇷 South Korea · 🇬🇧 UK
*By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
In South Korea, your first week at work does not merely introduce you to your role. It introduces you to a social order that has been in place since before you arrived and that you will spend months, possibly years, correctly positioning yourself within. In the UK, your first week is more likely to involve a cluttered desk, a broken laptop, a welcome lunch that gets rescheduled twice, and a folder of HR policies you are expected to have read by Thursday. Both countries have a functioning concept of mentorship. They simply disagree about what it is for.
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Learn the sunbae-hoobae dynamic before you start: your sunbae is your senior colleague, and the relationship carries genuine mutual obligation — they guide you; you show deference | Skip the orientation formalities or arrive late to any structured onboarding session; punctuality and attentiveness at the start signal how you will perform overall |
| Pay close attention to titles and forms of address — Korean workplaces use honorifics based on seniority, and getting them wrong signals either ignorance or disrespect | Try to build lateral relationships before the hierarchy has been established; in Korean workplaces, vertical relationships come first |
| Accept after-work social invitations, particularly in your first weeks — the hoesik (team dinner) is where informal integration actually happens | Treat your sunbae as merely a source of task information; the relationship is social and relational, not just functional |
| Ask your sunbae rather than your manager for guidance on unwritten norms — they are both more accessible and more candid | Confuse age-based seniority with rank-based seniority; in the workplace, the sunbae is whoever joined before you, not necessarily the older person |
| Show visible effort and diligence during your first months — your reputation for reliability is established early and carries significant weight | Expect the onboarding programme to tell you everything you actually need to know; the official materials cover the formal; the sunbae covers the rest |
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Know your legal rights from day one: the Employment Rights Bill 2024 extended parental leave, paternity leave, and bereavement leave protections to all employees from the start of employment | Expect your probation period (typically 3–6 months) to involve close mentoring unless the company has explicitly set that up; many UK workplaces do not |
| Ask your line manager explicitly what success looks like in the first 90 days — British managers often assume you will figure it out, and will be privately disappointed when you don't | Interpret the low-key first week as indifference; British onboarding culture tends to be understated, not unwelcoming |
| Find your informal buddy, if one is assigned — in companies that have invested in their onboarding process, the buddy relationship is the most useful available to you | Expect your "buddy" to be your long-term mentor; the roles are distinct in most UK organisations, and conflating them creates awkward dynamics |
| Use your probation actively — request a midpoint check-in, ask for feedback, and clarify expectations; the UK system is designed for this | Wait to be told you're doing well; British professional culture can be reticent about explicit praise, and silence is not necessarily criticism |
| Build collegial relationships over tea, coffee, and the Friday drink — British workplaces value informality as a social lubricant, and participation signals integration | Treat the Friday drinks as optional if you're new; early visibility in social settings shapes how your team thinks of you |
South Korean workplace onboarding is inseparable from the sunbae-hoobae system — the formalised seniority relationship between those who joined before and after you. The sunbae (senior) is not merely a helpful colleague; they are the primary channel through which a new employee learns the unwritten rules of their organisation. According to community4foreigners.com's 2024 analysis of the sunbae culture, the relationship is explicitly understood as reciprocal: the senior owes guidance and protection; the junior owes deference, attentiveness, and the willingness to absorb organisational culture through active observation.
In larger Korean corporations, formal onboarding programmes are substantial: structured orientation, team introductions, and often company-specific training on systems, culture, and sometimes even physical fitness or teamwork exercises. A 2024 Korea Chamber of Commerce survey found that 65% of young professionals who engaged meaningfully with a mentor in their first two years reported stronger outcomes in professional integration and career progression. But the official programme is best understood as the frame; the sunbae relationship is the actual canvas. The new employee who navigates the formal onboarding flawlessly but neglects the social architecture — by arriving late to the hoesik, by skipping the informal corridor conversations, by going home on time every night in their first month — will be noticed.
Hofstede scores are instructive: South Korea's long-term orientation score is 100 (the maximum), reflecting a cultural emphasis on perseverance, relationship building, and deferred gratification. Onboarding, in this context, is understood as a multi-year process, not a week-long event.
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The UK's approach to onboarding is more procedural and legally framed than relational. A standard probationary period runs three to six months, during which the employee is assessed against a set of expectations that — in better-run organisations — are explicit from the start, and in many others, remain usefully vague until the review conversation arrives. The Employment Rights Bill 2024 has updated the legal landscape, extending day-one employment protections and requiring more formal engagement with probation as a structured support mechanism rather than a gatekeeping exercise.
Buddy systems and mentoring programmes exist across UK workplaces, but their quality varies enormously by company. At organisations that have invested in them, the buddy (informal guide) and mentor (development partner) roles are distinct and serve different purposes. NatWest Mentor's employer guidance on onboarding describes the buddy as "a friendly face to turn to for informal questions" — practical, accessible, and culturally oriented. The formal mentor relationship, by contrast, is typically longer-term and focused on career development, often external to the immediate team.
What the UK system lacks, relative to South Korea, is cultural transmission. British organisations often assume that a new employee will absorb the norms of the workplace through observation and trial — an approach that is efficient for people from similar professional backgrounds, and disorienting for those from elsewhere. Hofstede scores again: South Korea's uncertainty avoidance is 85 versus the UK's 35, which means Korean organisations tend to manage ambiguity by building explicit structures, while British ones tend to leave more to informal navigation.
The contrast here is between a relational model (Korea) and a structural model (UK). Korean onboarding builds a social network first and fills in the job content second. British onboarding establishes legal and procedural clarity first and leaves much of the social integration to informal processes that may or may not deliver. Neither model is complete: Korean onboarding can be overwhelming for foreigners who find the hierarchical expectations opaque; British onboarding can feel indifferent to employees who expected clearer guidance.
What both countries share is an implicit assumption: that the truly useful knowledge will be transmitted outside the official programme. In Korea, that transmission happens through your sunbae over dinner. In the UK, it happens over tea at 11am, or at the pub on Friday, or through a quiet word from a colleague who has been around long enough to know where the bodies are buried.
franvia.com — An expat who joined a mid-sized Korean corporation from London described spending his first two weeks doing everything in the formal onboarding correctly, then discovering at the first hoesik that his real integration had not yet begun. His sunbae had been watching how he handled the group dynamic, the soju, the karaoke, and the 2am taxi home. "The orientation was the audition," he later said. "The dinner was the actual interview."
Quora — A Korean professional who joined a UK financial services firm noted the disorientation of British indirectness applied to onboarding: her manager told her she was "settling in really well" in week three, and she had no idea whether this was accurate or polite. In Korea, she said, her sunbae would have told her specifically what she was doing correctly and what needed adjustment. The British version left her "professionally anxious in a very calm room."
Internations Seoul — A French engineer working at a Seoul tech company described the moment the sunbae system clicked for him: when he realised that his Korean senior colleague wasn't just answering his questions, but actively monitoring his reputation with the rest of the team and managing it on his behalf. "He told me before the quarterly review what I should and shouldn't say. In France, no one would do that — you'd have to figure it out yourself."
absoluteinternship.com — An intern at a Korean subsidiary noted that skipping the post-work dinner in his second week — citing tiredness — resulted in a week of noticeably cooler treatment from his entire team. No one said anything. The temperature just dropped. His sunbae explained it privately: "The dinner isn't about the food. It's about whether you're one of us."
If you're moving to South Korea, invest in the sunbae relationship as seriously as you invest in the job itself. The formal onboarding will teach you the system; the sunbae will teach you how to survive it. If you're moving to the UK, push gently but consistently for explicit feedback during your probationary period — the British professional norm of not saying anything if there's nothing to complain about can mask a quiet assessment that you would have benefitted from hearing earlier.
In both countries, the most important thing that happens in your first weeks is not on the schedule.
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Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.