Image source @pexels
Wen 丨 深火 (ID: shenrancaijing), author 丨 Wang Min, editor 丨 Jin Jiepan
The Spring Festival is getting closer and closer, and the annual "annual meeting season" has arrived. However, this "annual meeting season" in early 2022 is not as lively as before.
Affected by the epidemic, large-scale events in many places are difficult to hold again, and many companies have originally scheduled offline annual meetings, but they have to cancel or low-key online. On the social platform, many workers said that they had prepared the "annual battle suit" to surprise the audience, but they had to stop the flag due to temporary cancellation.
Among the Internet manufacturers with the most sense of existence in the annual meeting season in previous years, in addition to the online annual staff meeting held by Tencent in December 2021, which can also be counted as the large-scale annual meeting of the big factory, the rest of the big factories such as Ali, Byte, and Meituan have not reported the news of holding the group annual meeting.
More than one Internet industry observer has analyzed that in fact, even if there is no impact of the epidemic, in the case of stricter external supervision and bottlenecks in internal growth, the annual meeting of Internet companies "celebration banquet" may be difficult to reproduce in the short term.
However, Chinese has always valued the "year", and the annual meeting will not disappear in the end. Although there are not many large-scale offline annual meetings, small-scale "gathering together" is not uncommon.
The most common "party" type annual meeting planned by small teams can make the team that has been busy all year happy and happy. Offline, Universal Studios has become a major team building place, and special projects such as squid games and national tide parties are also popular. Online, there are also companies that have launched the Meta-Universe Annual Meeting.
No matter when the annual meeting season, the most popular part of the workers is the lottery link. However, only the game company's annual meeting prizes are still "rolled in", it is estimated that the game company's annual meeting only spent tens of millions of yuan to buy the prize money, and many employees of Internet manufacturers only have envy.
This annual meeting season, it is very deserted
"At the end of this year, why can't we see the crazy annual meeting of major companies?" Some netizens wondered.
In previous years, before the Spring Festival, one of the topics that workers talked about was the complicated and diverse forms of annual meetings of major companies. But this annual meeting season, the topic of the annual meeting is very cold.
According to deep combustion observation, a number of large factories have so far been absent from this "annual meeting season". Big factories, including Ali, Baidu, Meituan, Byte, Kuaishou, NetEase, etc., have not yet held the news of the group's annual meeting. Some large companies have also transferred online "cloud annual meetings", such as Tencent, Gaotu and so on.
There are many reasons for the desertion of this "annual meeting season", among which the impact of the epidemic is difficult to ignore. Due to the epidemic, large-scale offline events in many places at the end of 2021 cannot be held. "Many big hotels can't hold offline events, resulting in a plummeting decline in banquet revenue." An annual meeting planner said to Deep Burn.
A number of annual meeting planning practitioners have told Shen Yan that this annual meeting season, due to the epidemic, few companies have held offline large-scale annual meetings. The staff of an annual meeting planning company in Hangzhou mentioned to Shen Yan that it originally undertook an annual meeting order of 10 million yuan from a large company, but at present it can only promote the online part, and the offline part is directly postponed to October 2022.
On the other hand, large factories such as Meituan have not held group-type annual meetings for many years before. Many Meituan employees said, "When I entered the Meituan, I have never seen what is called the annual meeting."
A reason that is difficult to ignore is that since the second half of 2021, the Internet factories have collectively spent the winter, and the news of layoffs has risen one after another, and they have reduced benefits.
Previously, iQiyi and NetEase employees said that the company's welfare declined. According to the pictures posted by ByteDance employees on social platforms, its New Year gift box contains cooking pots, which are ridiculed by employees as "Is this the rhythm of canceling free meals?" Even when employees of large factories were asked about the most anticipated prizes, some people joked, "It is best to 'exempt tickets'." ”
Tencent's online annual meeting held internally on December 17, 2021, is actually an annual staff meeting, which is mainly based on senior management speeches, not the traditional "annual meeting". According to "Late Post", Ma Huateng, chairman of Tencent's board of directors and CEO, and president Martin Lau said at the employee meeting that the company should reduce costs and increase efficiency and "survive the winter".
iQiyi, which is mired in the wave of layoffs, held its annual meeting in mid-January 2022. Although many people think that it is good to hold the annual meeting at this time, some employees complained, saying that compared with the annual meeting two or three years ago, it lacks innovation and is slightly shabby.
The "Cloud Annual Meeting" has become the choice of many companies in this annual meeting season. According to Shen Yan's understanding, Gaotu, which has laid off a large number of employees in 2021, also held a "cloud annual meeting" in the form of online viewing performances and lottery.
Gaotu held an online annual meeting
This annual meeting season is far from the "annual meeting grandeur" in previous years. After all, the annual meeting of the internet manufacturers in the past often did not lose the star concert, and the large company directly asked the star to help the scene, and the company's executives would also perform the show to help.
For example, at the Tencent Annual Meeting at the end of 2019, stars such as R1SE, Rocket Girl 101, and Sun Yanzi were directly invited to perform live. At The 20th anniversary annual meeting of Ali in September 2019, Ma Yun delivered a resignation speech, and the number of people on the scene reached 60,000. At the annual meeting of Kuaishou in early 2019, Su Hua, then CEO of Kuaishou, Cheng Yixiao, founder of Kuaishou, and Chen Dingjia, CTO of Kuaishou, all delivered speeches, and the "Business Breakthrough Award" given to a product technical team reached 5 million yuan.
This annual meeting season, when onlookers were envious of "other people's annual meeting", they did not expect that Lenovo was exposed to plan to hold the "2022 Lenovo New Year" activity at Universal Studios Beijing on January 21, 2022, and actually became the most arrogant of the many big factories. It is estimated that Lenovo chartered Universal Studios, which is expected to cost between 7 million and 16 million yuan. However, due to the impact of the latest epidemic, the final charter was not completed.
There are fewer big events, but no less tricks
There are only a few large annual meetings, but the small annual meetings of the large factory business department are not less than a few. Many teams want to take advantage of the New Year's Eve to lead the team to relax and unwind.
Liu Yang, planner of the annual meeting, mentioned that many Internet manufacturers are shrinking benefits and cutting budgets, but some departments originally have a certain amount of team building budgets. Some department leaders will feel that by the end of the year, employees should be allowed to relax and will take the initiative to apply for funds to prepare for the annual meeting.
"After we plan the annual meeting for one department of the big factory, they will generally recommend other departments of the same company to plan." He said that these teams will directly use external teams to help plan the annual meeting activities, offline and online.
Planning enterprises will publish the annual meeting plan designed for the large factory department Image source / Little Red Book
Offline, a one-day tour of Universal Studios has become a must for many companies to build annual meetings in the second half of 2021. On some social platforms, Universal Studios one-day tour team building has long been brushed screen, and even some netizens said: "Companies in Beijing, there are still those who have not been to Universal Studios team building."
One of the popular projects of universal studios coming of age image source / little red book
Outdoor temperatures are colder in winter, and there are fewer options for team-style annual meetings. In addition to Universal Studios, this "annual meeting season", immersive story plots such as squid games, national tide style "masquerade balls" and ice and snow projects, etc., are also popular in the circle of workers.
However, although the above projects are popular, they can only be regarded as a warm-up, which cannot meet the needs of some companies for the annual summary, year-end debriefing, awards and other links at the annual meeting.
The theme activity + dinner party is now a unique and relatively simple annual meeting activity. The planners of the annual meeting mentioned that the annual meeting needs to be promoted at least one and a half months in advance, and the form of the annual meeting is determined, the division of labor of the members of the annual meeting planning group, and the detailed arrangement of the activity process. Thematic team building requires the reservation of venues and props, and if there is a performance program or dinner, the staff also needs to prepare and rehearse the program in advance.
The two-day and one-night team-building annual meeting process of "ski + hot spring hotel + hot theme team building project and conference summary" has become the first choice for many business departments of Beijing companies.
The project looks similar, but the department with a large budget has more money to play, and the department with a small budget has less money to play.
Take the popular Beijing suburban Gubei Water Town as an example, in addition to the ancient town, ski projects, high-end Nanshan skiing, the middle end of the Cloud Buddha Mountain skiing, ticket prices can be about half the difference; hot spring hotels are also divided into homestays and large hotels; as for the theme team building, popular themes such as squid games, national tides, etc., the need for larger venues, but also need to rent more props, per capita prices compared to ordinary quality expansion of hundreds of yuan higher. The per capita price of a set is usually between 1000-2000 yuan.
"Before the Spring Festival, the Gubei Water Town Hot Spring Hotel on the weekend was no longer easy to book. During the annual meeting season, the squid game program has been fully lined up. Liu Yang said.
Online, most companies' annual meetings are in the form of live broadcasts or recorded programs in advance, supplemented by live construction or background cutouts to enhance the experience.
There are some small teams that want to play the "Cloud Annual Meeting" with a new idea and play the slogan of the "Meta-Universe" Annual Meeting. The so-called "Meta-Universe Annual Meeting" is actually the use of app to generate a virtual image for everyone, watch performances or draw lotteries in the virtual space.
Source of a company's "Metacosm" annual meeting / Little Red Book
However, the feedback received by Deep Burn is that the tricks of the online annual meeting are increasing, but it is only slightly innovative, and the interactive experience is still inferior to offline.
Workers only look forward to the lottery
After the annual meeting season, the most discussed topic in the workplace is which prizes are drawn and how to "deal with" these prizes. So that after each annual meeting, there will always be a large number of "annual meeting prizes" on the second-hand trading platform.
Source / Idle Fish
Even if there is a saying that "the end of the annual meeting lottery is idle fish", the company's annual meeting attaches no less importance to the lottery.
Liu Yang told Deep Burn that many companies, especially the sales department, attach great importance to the annual meeting. The annual meetings of companies that focus on motivating employees are not only more formal on the spot, but also more inclined to awards and lottery. The former focuses on rewarding the work of the past year, while the latter is to give benefits to employees so that everyone can "dip into joy".
He mentioned that some companies spend nearly half of the budget of the annual meeting on purchasing prizes, and the other half is the annual meeting site construction, staff accommodation and food. According to a user of a workplace social platform, even an online education company that suffered a "double reduction" also released Huawei's high-end mobile phone as a prize at the annual meeting.
The money is all paid, and the thoughts spent are only more and more. An annual meeting organizer complained, "We want to give gifts for the annual meeting, and our brains are going to explode." The 37 people in the department held an annual meeting, and the leader said that everyone could not return empty-handed, and the gifts could not overlap, and practicality should be considered. ”
According to the understanding of deep combustion, in addition to the latest electronic products of "changsheng", the prizes of different companies have different styles, and the arrogant companies will send luxury jewelry and bags, big-name cosmetics, and some even directly send large cash red envelopes. Trendy companies will choose blind boxes and gold bars favored by young people in the past two years.
Among the Internet companies, the highest-profile lottery is also the game company.
According to the public account of Miha Tour Company, the annual meeting lasted a total of 28 minutes, without walking the red carpet, without leaders speaking, without employee group programs, without wine table art, only lottery. Although there is no list of prizes, think of the scene where PS5 and RTX3070 graphics cards piled up at MihaYou's annual meeting last year, you know that the prizes are not cheap.
Judging from the prizes announced by Lilith for the 2022 Annual Meeting Lottery, the total amount of all the prizes on the prize list is tens of millions of yuan, including MacBook Pro, Sony TV, iPad Pro and so on.
On the lottery list of paper-folding games, Eagle Corner Network and Mu Hitomi Technology, which was acquired by Byte, the prizes are also valuable. Among them, the special prize of the paper folding game is a Chanel bag worth about 50,000 yuan, while the sunshine award for each regular employee is about 3,000 yuan, and each intern employee can also get an AirPods.
In the hearts of many people in the workplace, the least creative lottery link is the most anticipated link in the annual meeting, and the prize of the annual meeting is the side feedback of the operation of a company and the welfare of employees. But no matter how much you look forward to it, looking at the companies that are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to purchase prizes, the vast majority of workers only have envy.
In any case, the annual meeting is indispensable
An annual meeting may be simple or complex, but the links are nothing more than the annual summary, employee motivation and relaxation, and giving back to customers. Behind the surface, there is always something deeper surging forward.
Zhu Jupeng, a human resources expert, believes that the most important thing for the so-called "annual meeting" is interaction and expression. The node of "New Year" is relatively special, if it is simply eating, drinking, and lottery, it will lose its original meaning. Team-building activities may be carried out at any time of the year, but the "New Year" node is only once a year.
In terms of the company's organizational development, the purpose of the annual meeting is to enhance the feelings between colleagues in the company, enhance cohesion, motivate employees, let the company maintain a benign competitive atmosphere, and after relaxing, face the challenges of the new year with a new look.
For employees, this is also an opportunity to show themselves. It is not only possible to show their strengths in the performance program, but also a time to talk and get along with the company's senior management. In the two years of popular talk shows, "spitting" has also become a must-have program for the company's annual meeting, such as some departments will spit on other departments to be connected in the business process.
In addition, employees and bosses are necessary roles among those who attend the annual meeting, and an open annual meeting can also include future candidates of the company, business line partners, external consultants, and even company partners with competitive relationships. The annual meeting is a place to listen to the voices of all parties.
Zhu Jupeng was recently invited to attend the annual meetings of four or five companies, and he believes that from the expressions of grass-roots employees at the annual meetings, it can be seen that the future development trend of a company can be seen. "The most important thing is to let people inside summarize and express. Leaders should not only sit offline and listen, but also dare to let employees ask questions and give feedback to employees. ”
Whether the preparation is simple or complex, whether the budget is high or low, the annual meeting to enhance the sense of cognition and belonging, as part of the corporate culture, always has to be held.
However, when will the high-profile feast-style annual meeting of the Internet giants reappear, there will be a question mark.
Note: At the request of the interviewee, Liu Yang is a pseudonym in the article.