Some 120 welfare civil servants across 27 neighborhoods to receive professional development and emotional care training in the first and second halves of the year; bestselling author Jeong Mun-jeong invited to lead sessions on handling difficult complaints and mind care
Songpa-gu is launching an initiative to restore the mental well-being of social welfare civil servants who face a wide range of complaints on the front lines and have long been overlooked as emotional laborers.
The district will hold a "Professional Capacity-Building Training for Social Security Benefits Officers" on Friday at the KT Corp Academy building in Songpa, targeting some 60 social welfare officers and welfare-related staff from 27 neighborhood community centers across the district.
The training was designed based on feedback gathered from front-line staff during a job training session held in January. The aim is to ease the emotional burden placed on civil servants by complex and unusual complaints that arise during welfare benefit applications and consultations, while also strengthening their professional expertise.
The district has invited Jeong Mun-jeong, a widely recognized communication expert, to lead the sessions. Jeong is the author of bestselling books including "How to Smile and Handle Rude People" and "Kind but Not a Pushover," and actively engages with the public through her YouTube channel "Jeong Mun-jeong-dap."
The first part of the training will introduce self-protective communication techniques to help civil servants navigate emotionally draining complaint situations. The second part will cover mind care tailored to social welfare workers, strategies for strengthening workplace communication, and tips for managing job-related stress, with the goal of sharpening front-line response skills.
Emotional care training for social welfare staff across all 27 neighborhoods will continue in the second half of the year. The district also plans to sustain practice-oriented training to help welfare officers build stronger professional competencies.
The district has put in place a range of measures to protect staff who handle public complaints. Body cameras, emergency bells, CCTV, and an automatic call-termination response system have been installed at public service counters, and the district provides psychological counseling, medical expense coverage, and liability insurance for affected employees.
"The first priority is to ease the emotional burden experienced by the welfare staff who dedicate themselves on the front lines, closest to residents," Songpa-gu District Mayor Seo Gang-seok said. "Through this training, we will look after our employees' communication skills and mental health to raise the professionalism of their work and the quality of welfare services, and continue our commitment to servant administration."
seouldream01@heraldcorp.com
