A workplace-organizing service that follows free labor consultations

Where free consultations begin

Gyeonggi Province is recruiting workplaces in the province with five or more and fewer than 30 regular employees for its 2026 Gyeonggi Shared Growth Labor Consulting programme (경기상생 노무컨설팅). There is no industry restriction. Until November 20, 2026, it will select roughly 160 workplaces, in application order and within its budget, if demand is high. Under the provincial notice, a wide range of small restaurants, manufacturers, hospitals, academies, and construction businesses could qualify.

Selected workplaces receive up to three visits from community labor consultants. The consultants review whether employment contracts and wage statements were properly given to employees, whether minimum wage and allowances are correct, and whether records exist for working hours, breaks, days off, annual leave, and retirement benefits. The workplace does not pay the consultation fee.

Receiving a consultation does not automatically remove a business from inspection. Only workplaces with no violations, or those that fix the issues identified, may be excluded from Gyeonggi Province’s regular inspections in 2027. Ad hoc and special inspections, conducted when an issue arises, can still take place.

Behind this is the Labor Inspector Duties Act (노동감독관 직무집행법), which takes effect on December 8, 2026. Under the law, provincial and municipal governments can take on some inspection duties for workplaces with fewer than 30 employees within an agreed scope. Gyeonggi Province is preparing to deploy staff in the field in the first half of 2027. Even small workplaces will soon need to show actual work records and payment records, not just a contract on paper.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor, Korea’s national labor ministry, has also announced support of up to KRW 1.8 million per year from 2026 for electronic HR management service fees at workplaces with fewer than 30 employees. Supported functions include electronic employment contracts, attendance records, payroll calculation, wage ledgers, and wage statements. The policy focus is shifting from explaining the law to helping businesses create daily records.

What an owner needs is gap-finding, not more legal explanation

Consider a hypothetical side-dish manufacturer in Gyeonggi Province with 12 employees. The owner handles orders and clients as well as employee contracts, schedules, and payroll checks. Employees start at different times, and work often ends late on days when packaging volume peaks.

Suppose this business uses paper contracts, Excel schedules, messenger chats, and bank transfer records. To prepare for a consultation, someone must find each employee’s contract, recent wage statement, attendance record, work schedule, annual leave record, and retirement-benefit materials across multiple folders. Someone must also manually compare employees whose contract hours differ from their actual schedules.

The problem is not only a lack of knowledge about legal provisions. A business may have a contract but no record showing it was provided to the employee; it may have clock-in times but no break records; or it may have paid wages but be unable to explain which allowances were included. Even after a labor consultant identifies an issue, the work is not complete until new contracts are prepared, missing materials are filled in, employees confirm them, and the fixes are reviewed.

The needed service would first ask for the workplace name, employee count, payday, and working arrangement. It would then show the required materials for each employee and accept phone photos or files. Once materials arrive, it would show only the gaps on one screen: “no contract,” “no recent attendance record,” or “retirement-benefit material needs review.”

After the consultation, it would turn the consultant’s findings into tasks. Items such as “rewrite Kim’s contract,” “complete September break-time records,” and “check the annual leave ledger” would have an owner and a due date. Completed materials could be packaged and sent back to the labor consultant. The owner would see three things to do today, rather than a list of laws.

Human judgment still remains necessary. Labor consultants and business owners must determine actual working hours, recalculate allowances, change contract terms, and explain those terms to employees. The service should not make legal conclusions. Its job is to prevent missing materials and track agreed actions through to completion.

The first paying customer may not only be a business owner receiving a free consultation. A labor consultant’s office that repeatedly requests materials from many workplaces and checks whether improvements were completed could be a faster customer. A reasonable assumption is to look for the first ten customers among workplaces applying to the Gyeonggi Shared Growth Labor Consulting programme and the labor consultants supporting them. Whether you can access actual participant lists needs to be verified.

Because free consultations and government support for service fees already exist, it may be difficult to charge for general legal explanations. Focus instead on finding missing materials, reducing repeated requests for the same documents, and creating a package that proves post-consultation improvements are complete. First confirm whether customers currently rely on paper, Excel, and messenger chats. That will help keep the product scope small.

Abroad, they sold one piece of record-keeping first

Australia’s Employment Contract Tool is a free tool that lets small-business employers answer questions and download a basic employment contract and job offer letter. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. The Fair Work Ombudsman, Australia’s workplace regulator, also provides free templates for payslip, working-hours, and roster records.

This example did not begin by handling every HR task at once. It started by helping employers avoid missing contracts and record templates when hiring a new employee. The implication for Korea is that a service can solve just one moment, such as a pre-consultation document folder or a first-employee hiring pack.

Deputy in the United States provides schedules, mobile attendance records, and working-hour approval for shift-based workplaces. Its basic product starts at about KRW 6,700 per employee per month, with a minimum monthly fee of about KRW 40,000.

Escapes in Time, a small escape-room business in Utah, moved its Excel-based working-hour administration to Deputy. According to a vendor-published customer story, it reduced time spent finalizing hours for payroll by about two and a half hours every two weeks, reduced recurring schedule creation by about one hour each week, and took about 20 minutes to calculate its first payroll hours. It is an example where the reason to pay was eliminating repeated data entry, rather than receiving legal advice.

Australia’s Employment Hero bundles employee records, schedules, attendance, payroll, and retirement-fund contributions. Its attendance and scheduling functions are listed at about KRW 3,800 per employee per month, with a minimum monthly fee of about KRW 38,000.

Focus Computing, a three-person education technology company, adopted Employment Hero’s HeroClear before a change in retirement-fund contribution methods in July 2026. According to a vendor-published customer story, the company could submit contributions through a few selections after finalizing payroll. This shows that even a small team may pay for a narrow function when a statutory payment method changes.

Four things to build right now

1. Consultation preparation document folder

• What it does: Once a consultation date is entered, it gathers required contracts, wage statements, attendance records, and retirement-benefit materials by employee.
• Who uses it: The person responsible at a restaurant or manufacturer with 5 to 29 employees that has applied to the Gyeonggi Shared Growth Labor Consulting programme.
• Why now: Consultations take place in November and December 2026, and material checks and improvements must be completed within up to three visits.
• First screen: Show three statuses beside each employee name: “ready,” “no material,” and “labor consultant review needed.”

2. Post-consultation improvement deadline board

• What it does: It turns a labor consultant’s findings into workplace-specific tasks and deadlines, then collects supporting materials again.
• Who uses it: Certified labor consultants and staff at consultation-delivery organizations that advise several small workplaces at once.
• Why now: Recording completed improvements, rather than simply receiving findings, moves a workplace closer to eligibility for exclusion from Gyeonggi Province’s regular inspections in 2027.
• First screen: Show the number of incomplete actions by workplace, the nearest deadline, and the date of the last material request.

3. Shift-work record reconciler

• What it does: It displays planned schedules, actual attendance records, and hours reflected in payroll side by side, highlighting differences.
• Who uses it: The owner of a neighborhood bakery or restaurant with 8 to 20 employees, where part-time and full-time staff work together.
• Why now: Both Gyeonggi Province’s consultations and the national government’s electronic HR management support treat working-hour records and payroll calculation as core items.
• First screen: Show only employees whose three records differ during the current pay period.

4. New-hire record pack

• What it does: After entering a new employee’s details once, it guides the user through contract preparation, confirmation of delivery, the first work schedule, and payroll preparation.
• Who uses it: The owner or manager of a salon, academy, or small clinic that is beginning to exceed five employees.
• Why now: Like Australia’s free contract tool, preventing one mistake at the point of hiring is easier to start with than building a full HR management service.
• First screen: Include an “Add new employee” button and a progress sequence from contract delivery and signature confirmation to preparing the first payday.

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s case is shaped by Gyeonggi Province’s consultation programme, an upcoming inspection arrangement, and national support for electronic HR services. Check whether your own market has a similar free advisory service, a regulatory change, or a subsidy that creates a documentation bottleneck. If it does, the opportunity may be in collecting records and completing follow-up work rather than explaining the rules.

Make one call today

Call one labor consultant’s office that may handle consultations for small businesses in Gyeonggi Province. Ask how many times it recently requested the same material during a consultation and how it tracks completion after findings are issued. If it has examples of requesting the same document twice or more, and separately manages improvement deadlines in a notebook or Excel, the post-consultation improvement deadline board is worth testing as the first product.