Reporter | Xu Shiqi
Edit | Song Jiannan
1
After working on the factory production line for two days, Chen Lin heard that a colleague had picked a pick and left.
They were originally the same batch of students who entered the school of Gree Electric Appliances, in order to stay in Gree to work, they had to go through two major tests: military training and production line internship. Chen Lin heard that the colleague had poor physical fitness, and she couldn't stand the psychological gap of working on the assembly line, so she gave up the job opportunity. Every year there are new people who are lost in these two links.
After graduating from a second college in Guangdong, Chen Lin entered the headquarters of Gree Electric Appliances in Zhuhai through school recruitment. That year, Gree Electric recruited more than 100 graduates at her school, far more than other companies. Although the salary is not high, but fortunately, the brand is famous and close to home, Chen Lin finally accepted this offer.
Chen Lin's "net red" boss Dong Mingzhu has always been keen to express his concern for employees, from building buildings to divide rooms for employees, to criticizing the spicy and hot staff canteens in variety shows, and seems to be practicing her humanized management concept.
In the capital market, Gree Electric Appliances is also particularly generous, and the dividend amount is often the first in the home appliance industry. On February 13, the company released its 2021 interim dividend plan, which intends to distribute a cash dividend of 10 yuan (including tax) to all shareholders for every 10 shares, with a total cash dividend of 5.537 billion yuan. Wind data shows that since gree electric appliances were listed in 1996, cash dividends have been implemented 22 times, with a cumulative net profit of 190.752 billion yuan, a cumulative cash dividend of 84.318 billion yuan, and a dividend rate of 44.20%.
Can Gree continue to attract young talents?
Alternative corporate culture
The employees recruited into Gree are collectively referred to as "college students", and the entry process is quite distinctive, roughly speaking: about 4 days of training, 3-7 days of military training, and a one-month "dream-chasing line" production line internship.
Military training is regarded as the unique corporate culture of Gree Electric Appliances, in addition to the need to participate in the school enrollment, the full-time employees also need to train the military posture and walk the right step after work.
The production line internship is to work on the basic assembly work in the factory. After entering the factory, the college students will be assigned by the class leader in the factory, and the working hours are the same as ordinary workers, from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., a full 12 hours. The basic principle of production line distribution is: where there is a shortage of people, go wherever there is a shortage. Work includes nut removal, strapping, etc.
Taken during the production line internship, pictures provided by the interviewee.
Of course, letting school enrollment "go down" is not unique to Gree. Liu Zuohu, the founder of OnePlus Mobile Phone, said on social media in 2017: "The first test of school enrollment is the production line internship, and I personally experience how a good product is born." "The super factory Foxconn will also let most of the fresh graduates of the "elite class" recruited by the school go to the factory for internship for a few weeks or even months.
It is of course beneficial to let employees involved in hardware or technology positions experience first-hand, but when this practice is widely implemented, Sales Management Trainee Chen Lin thinks it is difficult to learn anything. In the month of the production line internship, she only took a salary of more than 2,000 yuan, "the intensity of work is the same as that of ordinary workers, and the result is that the salary is not as high as theirs, and there is inevitably a gap in her heart." ”
In addition to school enrollment, when there is a shortage of production line staff, some office employees will also be arranged to "support production".
In February 2020, Gree announced that it would start producing epidemic prevention materials, including masks, thermometers, goggles and so on, which were in short supply at that time. In fact, a considerable part of these products are completed by the "support of production" by office staff.
"The various departments take turns to support production. My task at the time was to fold masks, 6,000 a day, which would take 6-7 hours. Chen Lin said that at that time, the company did not issue subsidies, although the support was not frequent, but it also caused some complaints internally.
Full staff marketing
"The first wave of cold air in 2022 is already on the way! The cold lasts a long time throughout the holiday, and the cold holiday is the best time to sell electric heaters. Require each unit to implement: Each employee completes the sale of 2 electric heaters from January 30 to February 8. During the Spring Festival holiday, Gree issued this instruction to employees.
If you have relatives and friends working in Gree around you, there is a high probability that you will brush up on product promotion information in their circle of friends, and you may also feel their sales, which is often behind the sales indicators assigned to all employees by Gree Electric Appliances.
As a large home appliance manufacturer with air conditioning sales ranking among the top two in China for many years, Gree has sales channels throughout the country, and has established 27 sales companies and more than 30,000 stores in various places. In the face of the impact of e-commerce, Gree began to try to transform to new retail in 2019, and adopted a strategy called "full staff marketing, online sales".
Specifically, full staff marketing means that each Gree employee opens his own online store, relatives and friends enter the store by scanning the exclusive two-dimensional code, and the sales after placing an order are recorded as owned by the employee, and the sales target for the year is 10,000 yuan per person. Dong Mingzhu personally went to the battle, saying that his online store had exceeded 2 million yuan in sales in less than a month.
According to employees, the air-conditioning products they sell have few discounts, and sometimes the price is higher than other e-commerce channels. Some people joked that this was "selling an air conditioner, one less friend." ”
Two years later, the goal of full staff marketing is improving, which varies according to different departments and positions.
According to the interface news interview, the sales position has a goal of 100,000 yuan / person / year, and some positions are 20,000-30,000 yuan. Internally, department leaders also compare turnover with each other, and every promotion season such as "618", they are more energetic to encourage employees to sell. Sales performance does not directly affect appraisal and salary, but if it is not up to standard, it may face pressure from the leadership.
Before the "full sales", the troubles of employees mostly came from Gree mobile phones.
The first Gree mobile phone was released in 2015, when Dong Mingzhu declared that the target sales target was 50 million units. Until now, Gree has not announced specific sales, but the outside world has estimated through e-commerce data that by 2019, Gree mobile phone sales will be about 100,000 units in three years. Compared with other brands, the global shipment volume of Xiaomi mobile phones in 2015 was 120 million, and the transsion mobile phones mainly focused on the African market also had more than 21 million shipments.
It's hard to say where the sales of Gree mobile phones come from, but Gree employees and dealers have obviously contributed a lot.
Former Gree employee Zeng Cheng recalled that around 2018, the internal purchase of Gree mobile phones by employees almost became a mandatory indicator. "At the end of 2018, the company said that it would pay bonuses to everyone, and finally issued a voucher for the employee mall, and (stipulated) that it was necessary to buy a Gree mobile phone." Zeng Cheng said that he received nearly 10,000 yuan of employee in-house purchase mall vouchers at that time, which was valid until December 31, 2018. Zeng Cheng finally bought an air conditioner and a Gree mobile phone in the internal mall and gave it to his mother.
Zeng Cheng said that the limited-era gold coupons issued in 2018 may be related to the performance target of 200 billion yuan.
Dong Mingzhu made a bold statement when he became the chairman of Gree Electric Appliances in 2012: an annual growth of 20 billion yuan, by 2018 to achieve 200 billion yuan of revenue. 2018 is also the time when Dong Mingzhu and Lei Jun's 5-year gambling appointment is known. In 2018, Xiaomi's revenue was 174.9 billion yuan, and Gree was impartial, just stuck in 200 billion yuan of revenue, and Dong Mingzhu won the billion gamble. Afterwards, some media asked Dong Mingzhu whether the billion yuan was cashed, and she replied: I did not ask for it, and he did not give it.
Dealers also have a share. A home appliance dealer said that when Gree ships air conditioners to it, it will tie-in gree non-hot products including mobile phones, large pine small household appliances, etc., and will also use these products to deduct some of the rebates (Gree's previous reward strategy for dealers, including payment discounts, proportional cash returns, etc.).
Since 2015, Gree has released a total of 6 mobile phone products, namely Gree mobile phone 1st generation, Gree mobile phone 2nd generation, Gree color industry mobile phone, Gree mobile phone 3rd generation, Dasong G5 and G7, the latest Dasong G7 released in November 2021. Employees said that although the company is no longer mandatory to purchase Gree mobile phones, "basically everyone still has one." ”
How to attract young people?
At the 2020 shareholders' meeting of Gree Electric Appliances, some investors asked Dong Mingzhu: How to view the high turnover rate of Gree Technology Department?
Dong Mingzhu acquiesced to this fact and replied: "On the one hand, because Zhuhai's geographical location is relatively remote, young people still yearn for big cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen. On the other hand, many young people feel tired from work. In the future, Gree will focus on retaining talents through employee stock ownership plans. ”
In June 2021, Gree Electric Appliances issued an employee stock ownership plan for the first time, in which employees can subscribe for the company's shares at a price of 27.68 yuan per share (about 50% of the company's stock price at that time), and the proposed capital contribution is capped at 3 billion yuan. But the plan was not fully implemented in the end. In September, the company issued another announcement that according to the actual situation of the company, the company intends to cancel 70% of the repurchased shares in the third phase (a total of 221 million shares) to reduce the registered capital, and the remaining 30% will still be used for the employee stock ownership plan.
At the shareholders' meeting held that month, some investors pointed out that "the subscription ratio of Gree employee stock ownership plan is not very high". Dong Mingzhu responded that part of the reason was that the company's employees "did not have money" and did not have enough to pay the amount of shareholding subscription.
So, what is the salary level of Gree Electric appliance employees?
According to the 2020 annual report, the per capita annual salary of Gree Electric Appliances is less than 110,000 yuan. Compared with the other two home appliance giants, Midea Group (including KUKA) has a per capita annual salary of 177,500 yuan, and Haier Zhijia has reached nearly 230,000 yuan. If you add five insurances and one gold, roughly divided by 1.5, the average annual salary of Gree employees is about 70,000 yuan.
Drafting: Interface News
"Compared with college classmates, the salary difference when I first graduated was not big, but the gap was getting bigger and bigger." Chen Lin said that after working for two years, her monthly after-tax salary was nearly 6,000 yuan.
The salaries of technical employees are also not high. A commercial air-conditioning system engineer who left in 2021 told the interface news reporter: "In the industry, everyone has a consensus that Gree has low wages. ”
The former technical employee has two years of work experience, with a monthly salary of about 6,000 yuan, plus overtime wages of up to 7,000 yuan. Even in manufacturing, this is a low level for technicians. The employee also revealed that a leader of the same department who has worked in Gree for six years has an annual salary of 150,000 yuan, but his salary has doubled after jumping ship.
In addition to a fixed salary, employees can earn additional income by assessing job titles and project bonuses. If it is rated as an "expert", employees can receive a generous bonus of 100,000 yuan per year. The project bonus must be divided into three years to get it, "the first year to do, the second year to evaluate, the third year to issue, many people stay up less than three years and leave." The above-mentioned former employee said that in 2021, there will be many people in his department who will leave, a total of 30 people in the department, and nearly 10 in half a year.
"If you have the same work experience and ability, you can jump to a large company in your peers, and basically your salary can be doubled." A senior Gree employee sighed.
In addition to salary, equity incentives are also attractive benefits for most listed companies. Midea Group's equity incentives are almost once a year, and have now been carried out to the eighth phase, from the company's senior executives to the backbone of the business have the opportunity to participate, the number of people in each period ranges from hundreds to more than a thousand people, and the lock-up period is 12 months. Haier Zhijia has also carried out the fifth phase of the employee stock ownership plan, which can be participated by core employees, and the lock-up period is also 12 months.
In contrast, the benefits of Gree Electric Appliances to employees are more reflected in the level of life. Chen Lin said that Gree has staff dormitories in many places in Zhuhai, and only needs to pay a few hundred yuan of rent per month, and the price of canteens is also comparable to that of universities. Pearl Plaza, which was just built last year, provides a large number of housing listings for employees in the central area of Zhuhai, giving priority to married and technical personnel to apply. In the longer term, Gree encourages employees to "dedicate their lives", that is, Gree has been working until retirement, less pressure to be "optimized" after the Internet industry is 35 years old.
"I don't work much overtime, I don't have much pressure, I have time to prepare for graduate school." On the other hand, it's about paying to learn. Chen Lin said.
(At the request of the interviewee, Chen Lin and Zeng Cheng are pseudonyms.) ）