Author / Zhou Xiangyue, Li Tease Xue Yongwei, Xu Ge, Writer of "Finance and Economics" Weekly
Editor / Dong Yuqing
Internet giants enter the "care" time
The layoff storm swept the entire Internet, but the big factories began to desperately amplify the employee welfare.
On December 14, Alibaba announced a series of employee "heart-warming plan" initiatives on the intranet, which not only extended maternity leave, added parental leave, 7 days of full-pay companionship leave, but also provided 20 days of full-pay long-term service leave.
At the same time, Ali canceled the traffic reimbursement for employees working overtime at night to take a taxi, but changed it to a universal transportation subsidy for all employees, enjoying 1200 yuan / month in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and 800 yuan / month in other cities, even if the employees who live close to them can also enjoy this benefit. At the same time, the flexible office system will be piloted, and qualified teams will be encouraged to experiment with flexible work of no more than one day per week, and can freely choose office locations.
From the perspective of the above benefits, an obvious change is that the paid leave of employees has increased a lot, and most of these benefits are concentrated in two major aspects, reducing the burden of raising children and advocating not to be involved, which can be described as a positive response to the call of the state.
Ali's move not only quickly sent himself to the hot search, but also led other big manufacturers into the field of public opinion. After all, as long as the benefits introduced by one big factory are praised, others often have to follow. In terms of competition for employee benefits, these Internet manufacturers have invisibly "rolled in".
"Fast" was once the most prominent feature of the Internet. Corresponding to "fast" is the normalization of Internet office work and rest 996 and large and small weeks. Employees also have to sacrifice their personal health and rest time in exchange for the rapid development of the company. Of course, many people can also get paid higher for this.
But this year, Internet manufacturers have become the focus of supervision. In August, the "996" and "007" work systems, which were ignited by the Internet industry, were clearly classified as illegal by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Supreme Court. In November, the State Anti-Monopoly Administration was established, and Alibaba, Tencent and other major manufacturers received 43 top-notch fines.
In this context, the large factories that have always advocated "wolf nature" began to collectively change the direction of the wind. Big factories have begun to show the "warm" side, adding to the anti-"inner volume" team, which not only reduces the working hours of employees, but also improves employee welfare.
The "first shot" of employee welfare was Tencent's game studio. In June, Tencent's photonic studio pilot fired the "first shot" against the "996" overtime culture, "forcing 6 o'clock to leave work on Wednesdays, and leaving the office no later than 9 o'clock on other weekdays", and the beaters boiled instantly.
Also following up on the upgrade of employee benefits, there is also the news that Lei Jun sent stocks to Jinshan and Xiaomi employees. Xiaomi announced in July that it had granted a total of 70.23 million incentive shares to 3,904 employees. In the same month, JD.com also followed suit by announcing that the average annual salary of employees would gradually increase from 14 to 16 in two years.
Then, on the first day of August, ByteDance announced the cancellation of the big and small weeks, and then further stipulated that overtime after 7 o'clock on weekdays should submit an application. That is, to work at 10:00 a.m. and leave at 7:00 p.m., 5 days a week; in addition, employees who need to work overtime after 7:00 p.m. can apply for up to 3 hours a day if they need to work overtime "with the consent of the leader".
A byte employee lamented to AI Finance and Economics that "overtime is really less", "After the cancellation of 996, we are basically leaving work at 7 o'clock on time, even if we occasionally need to work overtime, the leader will require that overtime applications must be submitted, overall, much less overtime than before." ”
In response to the trend of "anti-internal rolling" of employees, Tencent is naturally not far behind.
Following the "comprehensive double holiday, mandatory work before 6 o'clock every Wednesday for health day", "providing employees with interest-free loans for house purchases 900,000 yuan" and "4,000 yuan housing allowance for fresh graduates", Tencent even launched the "Employee Retirement Plan" a month ago, and the employee retirement treatment it launched has triggered heated discussions among "hit workers".
On November 5, Tencent also announced a further upgrade to this employee care program. That is, when employees retire at the legal age during tencent's employment period, they can enjoy three benefits of customized souvenirs, long-term service thank-you money and retirement honors provided by the company at the same time. Among them, the long-term service thank you payment is a fixed salary for 6 months; the retirement honorary payment provides two schemes: "service period" and "50% unbanned stock options", and employees can freely choose one of them.
Internet factories for employees to "reduce the burden" and "seek welfare" frequent actions, which for the long-term "996" exploitation of employees, will undoubtedly enhance their work happiness. From the perspective of the general environment, the collective pursuit of employee welfare by large factories is inseparable from the background of increasingly strict Internet supervision. The Labor Law stipulates that the State implements a working hour system in which the daily working hours of workers shall not exceed eight hours and the average weekly working hours shall not exceed forty-four hours.
Some analysts also believe that this wave of "employee welfare" is essentially for the sake of "cost reduction and efficiency" and "fattening and thinning" in manpower. Not long ago, ByteDance, Tencent, JD.com and other large factories have successively reported news of personnel streamlining and business adjustment, and many people have found that a significant feature of this wave of layoffs is that a large number of employees with high working age and high wages have been laid off.
In simple terms, it is to cut down inefficient businesses, projects and personnel, leaving behind talents with higher office efficiency, and for this part of the talent, it is also necessary to supplement the insufficient welfare part.
Some rejoice and some are worried
In fact, as early as December 14, before Ali announced a number of benefits, news of extended maternity leave began to be reported everywhere. On November 25, Alibaba Group's headquarters in Zhejiang Province launched a new maternity and parental leave policy, which Alibaba responded quickly to just a few days later.
Shortly after the news of the maternity leave policy in Zhejiang Province was issued, at noon one day, Yuanye, an Ali female employee who was still on maternity leave, was busy feeding her child, and she suddenly received a notice from HR that the maternity leave for one child had been extended from the original 128 days to 158 days, while the second and third birth leave could be extended to 188 days. Yuanye was very happy, she originally had worries, the child was still young and needed to be taken care of, and she was still reluctant to give up the maternity leave that was scheduled to expire in early January next year, and she was worried about what to do, who knew that the maternity leave was suddenly extended to mid-February, just after a reassuring year and then go to work.
I thought that "welfare" would end here, but I knew that on December 14, Ali introduced a number of welfare policies, "Our colleagues are quite surprised." Yuanye feels that there is not a lot of internal discussion about the increase in welfare, "because the welfare has always been quite good, and some are related to childcare, not all students are pregnant or giving birth." ”
For example, before the launch of the 7-day full-pay companionship leave, Ali had a number of family care programs, such as Ali employees' parents can receive free medical examination services (carnation plan) every year, and employee children enjoy million-level medical insurance protection with themselves.
In contrast, Yuanye is more focused on the new benefit of flexible office. "This is more convenient for the newly produced Bao Ma, and now many offices rely on DingTalk, online timely response on the line, which depends on the team leader's ideas and willingness, since the general direction is encouraged, the future may be really implemented."
Ali female employee Gardenia, who has not yet given birth, also attaches more importance to companionship leave, flexible office and various subsidies, especially flexible office, "at present, it has not started, specifically looking at the business line, but I feel very hopeful." ”
Compared with the new welfare benefits given by these big factories such as Ali, although Kuaishou's employee welfare system does not look so complete, internal employees evaluate the benefits very well. According to the 2020 annual report disclosed when Kuaishou was listed, its expenditure on employee welfare is not low, of which Kuaishou spent 16 billion yuan of "employee welfare expenses" in the first three quarters of 2020, of course, including 6.087 billion yuan of employee equity incentives.
Haitang, a Kuaishou employee, is very satisfied with this, mentioning that not long ago Kuaishou canceled the weekly work system, and she used three words to describe her life after resuming the double break - very happy. Begonia said that she is actually a person with a calm heart and indifferent To Buddhism, who attaches great importance to being alone and in her own space. After no longer having a big week, she felt that the weekend could finally be relaxed and more relaxed psychologically.
Don't look at the "small" benefit of canceling the big and small week, but the impact on the life of begonias is huge.
She confessed that she lived in Xi'erqi outside Beijing's North Fifth Ring Road, and it was always inconvenient to visit friends in the east during a single break, and it seemed luxurious to go back and forth for three or four hours. But after the weekend, everyone can cook a table of meals, chat on the sofa, watch the afternoon sun sprinkle down the floor-to-ceiling windows, and stay overnight even when it's dark. "This is life, and you don't have to rush to work the next day."
Of course, canceling the big and small weeks is not everyone's wish, at least for Byte employee Dongshu, who is now "more anxious". Dongshu recalled that it used to take a month to do the project, and now it takes a month and a half. As functional departments that support the business, they must follow the rhythm of the business, and the nerves must be tense at all times. In the words of Dongshu, the Internet industry is "contract system", not "package time system", which has nothing to do with working hours.
This also makes the rhythm of The East Tree's workday more compact. "I used to leave work at 10 o'clock at night, and now I even have to go to 11 o'clock and 12 o'clock, I am like this myself, the people around me are also very busy, last weekend I worked for two consecutive days, the work is still that work, change the place to work overtime." 」
Dongshu even missed the days of the big and small weeks, "If I can choose, I will still choose the big and small weeks, more calmly, want to slow down, now I can't slow down at all, more anxious." One weekend because of his low work efficiency, he didn't even dare to mention the two-day overtime application, only mentioned one day.
In other words, people who are used to the fast pace of the Internet are a little uncomfortable when the company starts to turn on the caring mode. They have long been accustomed to filling their lives with work, like gears that are accustomed to running fast, and if they can't run at the same pace as before, they may face a rusty situation.
Layoffs on the one hand, appeasement on the other
While the welfare of the big factory won a cheer, the layoffs were still quietly carried out. And the news of Alibaba's new benefits appears on the front and back feet, is the news that ByteDance will abolish the talent development center and streamline the HR department.
In fact, since September, Tencent, ByteDance and other major manufacturers have begun a new round of structural layoffs. In the past November, the big manufacturers have released the performance report of the third quarter of 2021, the growth and profit are almost dismal, and the big manufacturers are no longer in the limelight. In early December, iQiyi was exposed to layoffs between 20% and 40%, and Kuaishou was also exposed that some business lines of the commercialization team in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen would be cancelled.
"Layoffs will remove some inefficient employees, improve the input-output ratio of the team and department, and the company will say that the salary of this part of the employee will be added to the current employees to motivate everyone to work more seriously." HR Kelly of a real estate company in Guangzhou said that the benefits at this time can also have a restraining effect, so that employees who are still working feel that their position is "fragrant", "so that they will be afraid of jumping jobs or being dismissed after not finding the same treatment position, fearful, and cherish job opportunities from now on." ”
Kelly has just witnessed the wave of layoffs in the real estate industry, and was once very envious of the welfare of large factories, but thinking that her company has less overtime and leaves work at 5:30 every day, Kelly suddenly has a little relief, "Ali's new benefits are very tempting, but as long as the work intensity of 996, you will find that the gap will not be very large." ”
"Welfare is not omnipotent, can only be said to be a lubricant", a communication company that has planned welfare distribution for 20 years HR told the "Finance and Economics" weekly that the salary and welfare team should state the significance of each expense and the effect to be achieved when doing welfare planning, and she also knows the intention of the boss: "I want employees to receive benefits and work hard, let employees feel really good, too concerned about us, too intimate, too worth fighting for, no, tonight I have to work overtime!" ”
This is actually a universal truth. American behavioral scientist Herzberg also pointed out that the material rewards of enterprises to employees are one salary and the other is welfare. Benefits are only an auxiliary and supplement to the means of remuneration, in order to maximize the satisfaction of employees, enhance cohesion, and create a cultural atmosphere of the enterprise.
But under the aura of the big factory, employees do not hesitate to publicize the company's welfare. Jin Xin, who does HR at an Internet company in Beijing, has recently frequently brushed up on Ali's welfare in the circle of friends. This long poster that has to be swiped three times on the mobile phone screen to browse, with the classic Ali orange, the first is the "companion leave" that Ali first promoted in the industry. The last time I brushed the screen like this, after a major negative event in August, everyone came out to forward the company's "appeal initiative" to improve the management system.
In the Internet industry, she found that the new benefits have little effect on anti-job hopping, and employee job hopping is generally because of salary and job development, and the impact of benefits is small. People also pay more attention to salary and job content when looking for a job, and benefits are a plus, but they are not an absolute influencing factor.
"Ali's launch of such welfare measures at this time is more of a 'show'." Jin Xin feels that layoffs and benefits are not in conflict in nature: the purpose of layoffs is to match the company's business strategy adjustment, and the increase in benefits is to retain and stabilize the existing team that needs to increase work and resource investment. However, in the past year, many industries such as education and training, real estate and so on have also fallen into a wave of layoffs, and the Internet industry itself has also laid off a lot of employees, and Ali's increase in welfare at this time is somewhat special.
Several HR told Caijing Weekly that when enterprises formulate welfare measures, welfare costs are the first factors to consider, followed by the ability to solve employee pain points and conform to the company's corporate culture. The annual welfare plan is generally investigated by the human resources team, and the final decision is made by the manager at the president level.
"The development cycle of a product is not completed in ten days and half a month, but the big factory can let two teams develop at the same time, and finally the survival of the fittest." Being able to afford this kind of labor cost shows that 'companionship leave' is nothing for large factories. Jin Xin said that for Ali, these newly launched benefits are "small witches and big witches" relative to their annual turnover.
At the same time, the big factory opened a new round of competition in welfare. An unconfirmed screenshot of the network shows that the year-end award of NetEase's "Harry Potter Magic Awakening" project team is as high as 880,000 yuan, the year-end bonus of xiaomi smart factory technology department is 8 months' salary, and the year-end award of Tencent's "League of Legends" project team is 1.2 million yuan per person. This makes many people shout "start sour".
This time, on social platforms, employees began to expect corporate benefits to be "rolled up" as well. Previously, byte canceled the size of the week, and indeed set off a wave of "anti-internal roll" of large factories on the issue of work system, but later the real work pressure reduction situation does not seem to be optimistic.
It's just that Jin Xin is already immune to these benefits, and she bluntly said that it will be impossible for all employees to achieve this kind of welfare coverage, and "the overtime adjustment owed to the R&D team has not yet been cashed."
(At the request of the interviewee, all names in this article are pseudonyms)
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.