Image source @ Visual China
Three meals a day do not have time to do, order a meal; medicine and groceries are in a hurry, shouting errands... The almost ubiquitous takeaway service has become a vital part of social life, and relevant data show that the scale of online takeaway users in China has approached 500 million people, and the overall scale of the takeaway market is nearly one trillion yuan. The rider, as an integral part of it, naturally walked to the front of the stage.
In February 2020, the takeaway rider was included in the national occupational classification directory under the name of "online delivery man". In December 2021, the National Occupational Skills Standard for Online Delivery Workers was released, which divided the occupation of online delivery workers into 5 levels, clarifying the work content, skill requirements and related knowledge that each level needs to master, so that they have a clearer career development channel.
According to the relevant person in charge of the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2021, China's flexible employment has reached 200 million people. Among them are about 13 million food delivery riders, which already account for nearly 1% of the country's population base.
However, as this group continues to grow, the issue of its labor security has repeatedly sparked discussion. At the beginning of 2022, the market has released new signals.
Algorithm "unbundling"
Once upon a time, a concept that takeaway platforms were very proud of was called "algorithm optimal", that is, the shortest time for order delivery was captured through algorithms, and the delivery time limit was continuously tightened accordingly to achieve the optimization of the delivery efficiency of riders.
Zhang Danyang, who has been engaged in the takeaway industry for 7 years, has personally experienced this "disappearance of time". When I first became a rider in 2015, due to no navigation, I could only rely on human experience, the assessment time was longer, and the longest time limit for delivering food for 3 kilometers was 60 minutes; later, with the technical blessing, the actual delivery time of the rider was indeed reduced, and the requirements became about 40-45 minutes.
But the platform's pursuit of efficiency has not stopped, as the algorithm continues to explore the limit of manpower, the average delivery time of takeaway orders in the whole industry in 2019 is 10 minutes less than 3 years ago. This directly leads to the rider "racing against death, fighting with the traffic police, and making friends with red lights".
The shift happened in 2020, and The People's "Takeaway Rider, Trapped in the System" made people intuitively and deeply feel the impact of the algorithm on the rider for the first time, and also brought this problem to the attention. After a fierce battle over algorithmic values, algorithms were finally brought into regulation.
In July 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation and other 7 departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Implementing the Responsibilities of Online Catering Platforms to Effectively Safeguard the Rights and Interests of Takeaway Delivery Workers", which for the first time proposed that the "strictest algorithm" should not be used as an assessment requirement, and the assessment elements such as the number of orders, the punctuality rate, and the online rate should be reasonably determined through methods such as "algorithm selection", and the delivery time limit should be appropriately relaxed.
The general direction is gradually clarified, and platform companies actively respond, disclose algorithm logic, and continuously optimize algorithm rules.
Since the start of takeaway in 2018, Hungry Rider Li Sen has witnessed many adjustments to the rules of the platform, the biggest impact of which is that the knight's estimated delivery time has been adjusted from the original "time point" to a flexible "time period". "This gives us time to deal with emergencies, for example, many riders have encountered buyers who cannot be contacted due to poor signals, not to mention that after the outbreak of the epidemic, the community needs to check the health code and health certificate, which will inevitably delay for a few minutes, and the algorithm will not consider these before."
When it comes to special weather, Li Sen is also sensitive. According to him, in the face of bad weather, the platform will optimize the delivery route based on real-time meteorological data and match the flexible delivery time, which is more reasonable than the previous one-size-fits-all "10-minute delay". When there is a sudden abnormality, the rider can also apply for a matching flexible delivery time through manual filing.
In addition, the platform continuously collects feedback from riders and is committed to the humanization of the rules. Li Sen once made a suggestion to Hungry Mo on the issue of dispatch: "The dispatch is not far and near, but it is divided into directions, the previous system was a bit flawed, you are going south but suddenly come to a north list, people can not start." "After the improvement, this phenomenon is no longer there.
However, even if the algorithm is reformed and riders can deliver takeaways more calmly, under the mechanism of "more running and more gains", the risk still exists, and then reliable insurance protection is needed.
Since 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the State Administration of Market Regulation and other departments have successively issued policies to urge platforms and cooperative enterprises to assume corresponding responsibilities for the protection of the rights and interests of riders, support their participation in social insurance, and participate in the pilot project of occupational injury protection for flexible employment personnel on the platform in accordance with national regulations. The situation is starting to improve.
Li Sen told Titanium Media App that the current platform's protection for riders is mainly commercial insurance. "I haven't been hurt too much by how much I can report, so I don't know."
It was learned from the platform party Ele.me that the customized commercial insurance enjoyed by Blue Knight covers the main risks that may be encountered in takeaway delivery, such as accidental death, disability, accidental medical treatment, third party personal injury or death or direct property loss compensation, etc., and the current insurance rate is 100%. For special circumstances, such as risks that may result from the epidemic, the platform also provides special insurance protection.
In addition, the takeaway platform is also guiding and supporting knights to participate in corresponding social insurance according to their own situation. However, the social security mechanism for flexible employment groups has always been a complex system engineering, the flexibility of the existing social security system is not enough, and the flexible employment insurance system applicable in Beijing, Shanghai and other places also has a lot of threshold restrictions or cost requirements, which requires more government-enterprise cooperation in the future to explore innovative mechanisms for the management and guarantee of flexible employment groups.
Income "gravity"
For a long time, many people in the outside world have the impression of takeaway riders as more than 10,000 monthly incomes. This is not a legend, when the industry is just emerging, the number of riders is insufficient, in order to seize the market, the company will not hesitate to recruit employees at high salaries, and in the form of red envelopes, rewards, subsidies and other forms of dividends, each single commission is very high, the income is naturally considerable.
But that era is far away, in 2021, Wang Lin, deputy director of the Labor Relations Department of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security, visited the takeaway brother and experienced the feeling of being a takeaway brother for one day, running for nearly an hour and only earning 6 yuan 6, plus it has timed out, and 60% will be deducted. Wang Lin worked for 12 hours that day, and finally only completed 5 meal deliveries, only receiving 41 yuan of income, and his goal of earning 100 yuan a day was not even half completed.
Excluding the factor that he is "hand-born" as a newcomer, there are traces of a rider's delivery commission reduction. In recent years, due to the low threshold of the industry, too many people have been attracted in, and there is no longer a shortage of riders, so they have lost the bargaining power, and each commission is naturally not as good as before, and if you want to achieve a monthly income of more than 10,000, you need to complete more orders, and even work more than 12 hours a day.
According to the "2022 Blue Rider Development and Security Report" recently released by Ele.me, more than 40% of the riders on the platform are full-time, nearly 60% of the riders with other income, nearly 40% of the riders have their own jobs, and nearly 30% of the riders are engaged in distribution work on other platforms.
Nearly 60% of riders have other income, image source: Hungry Mo "2022 Blue Knight Development and Security Report"
Whether they make the rider's income their sole income or the rider's income is just a personal supplementary income, their most basic expectations for this profession are stable, or even high income.
Song Beijing was originally a businessman, running a fruit shop with his wife, and once he closed the shop as a rider, he "listened to the second brother who worked as a security guard in Hangzhou and said that he ran takeaway in his spare time and was quite profitable."
When I first joined Ele.me in March 2016, I could earn about 10 yuan in delivery fees for a single delivery order, and as the level increased, the unit price would be higher, which made Song Beijing see hope. "In the first two or three months, I was not familiar with the operation and route, and on average it was five or six thousand yuan per month, and now I can run about seventy or eighty orders a day, earning an average of about five or six hundred yuan a day."
It is worth mentioning that after him and the second brother, the eldest brother also joined the rider camp. In the six years of delivering takeaway food in Hangzhou, the three brothers ate and lived together, took care of each other, and had bought three suites in their hometown in Anhui, and they also planned to save enough money in this post to return to their hometown to do business in the future.
Three brothers of the Song family, picture source: Hungry
"I'm going to do it for another year or two." Song Beijing said frankly that in the future, what he is most worried about in this period of time is the sudden decline in the amount of orders in the off-season, and he can run fifty or sixty orders a day at most, earning about three or four hundred yuan; followed by unpredictable bad weather, etc., the difficulty of delivery will increase.
Although the off-peak season and natural conditions cannot be artificially controlled, the platform still invests heavily in solving the problem, thus establishing a series of guarantee mechanisms. For example, subsidies are provided for special delivery scenarios, such as bad weather, cold weather in winter, high temperature weather in summer, nighttime, etc., and each subsidy is provided for orders that are difficult to deliver, such as orders with excessive weight, excessive number of pieces, and excessive amounts. Hangzhou Blue Knight once posted a running order income of 3.8km distance: including weather subsidies of 1.5 yuan, platform rewards of 3 yuan, a total of 17.5 yuan.
"Riders can earn an average of 8,000 to 10,000 yuan per month, the station manager's salary is basically 10,000 to 15,000 yuan per month, the regional manager can get 12,000 to 20,000 yuan per month, and the city manager can get 25,000 to 30,000 yuan per month, plus dividends." Li Wei, who has been in the industry for more than 4 years, revealed to the Titanium Media App.
In 2021, the per capita disposable income of residents nationwide will be 32,189 yuan, and the disposable income of Shanghai and Beijing residents will be nearly 80,000 yuan. In contrast, the income of the rider group is still attractive – especially for many township and rural youth, the rider is still the "first job in the city" that can be quickly started.
It's just that after solving the problem of foothold and survival, how long to do next and where to go has become the source of anxiety for most riders, and it is also an urgent problem to be solved.
Where are the takeaway riders going?
Some of the takeaway riders in this group, like the three brothers of Song Beijing, regard riders as a transitional profession, or even just a side job, and some people have a higher sense of identification with this industry and are ready to be riders for a long time.
Hungry Mo's "Report" shows that this part accounts for 30% to 40% of the overall riders. For them, in addition to income, they also value the prospects of this career.
53% of knights expressed their willingness to be promoted, image source: Hungry Mo "2022 Blue Knight Development and Security Report"
"I didn't think about working in this business for so long at first." Zhang Danyang said frankly that at that time, many people around him felt that this line of work could not be done, and he also wanted to save some money first and then change to other jobs.
"After a few months of doing this, I found out how quickly this line of work is changing our eating habits." As a result, Zhang Danyang went to the BOD high-end catering development department and a number of franchisees, step by step from rider to station manager, and then to regional manager, and in 2020, he became the head of the City of Shanghai of Zi lime Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., a service provider of Ele.me.
Zhang Danyang introduced that the promotion mechanism within the company has been relatively perfect. Taking the promotion of the rider to the station manager as an example, "in the early stage, according to the amount of running orders and enthusiasm, the rider is selected to do a period of scheduling work; if the data performance of the station he is responsible for is considerable, he can be recommended by the station manager to participate in the 'point plan'; then get the training ticket through the written test, complete the improvement of his team building ability, psychological quality, and business refinement management ability, and can be appointed as the reserve station manager." ”
According to Ele.me, 80% of the takeaway station managers were promoted by knights. In 2021, 1877 knights were promoted to station master and captain.
As a "career" for riders, Li Wei was not initially supported. A native of Shanghai, with a bachelor's degree in computer information management, was once an employee of a state-owned enterprise, and his family did not understand why he had to suffer.
On the one hand, I feel fresh, but also want to prove myself, Li Wei's trial has been from 2017 to the present, during which he successfully transferred his job, and was promoted to the shanghai city manager of the service provider in 2020, and is currently responsible for the delivery business of the service provider in Shanghai.
Looking back, Li Wei felt that the most difficult thing was to rise from regional manager to city manager. "The new position needs to analyze the profit points and loss points of each time period and each site, including how to coordinate the fluctuations of the data source." And he does not have a little financial knowledge base, "fortunately, the platform has arranged special training." During that time, he invested a lot of energy to learn how to read financial statements and personnel knowledge, and from time to time he went to the finance department or the personnel department for practical training.
For Li Wei, these years are not only the promotion of positions, but also the improvement of personal ability: from managing himself to managing five or six hundred people, from not understanding the report to accounting for costs, optimizing management, and doing a large volume, even if he leaves the takeaway industry now, he also has the confidence to enter any service industry such as the logistics industry, "starting from the position of middle management."
Li Wei also specifically mentioned that his parents are now very supportive of their work, "They have watched me grow all the way, and they have also seen the development of this industry and the potential of the profession of rider." ”
In fact, as the rider's title gradually changes from "takeaway" to "takeaway brother" and "online delivery man", the career development of the rider has gone a long way out of the systematic road - to carry out the "online delivery man" new employment skills upgrading training, open direct post promotion, broaden the transfer path, in the long run, the rider "trapped in the occupation" is expected to break the ice.
It can be said that safety, income, development, is the three mountains faced by workers, behind the hot search again and again, the burden of riders is being reduced, not only for safety, income and other guarantees are being implemented, and now you can also see a gradually clear self-improvement and career growth path, the entire industry is developing in a healthy direction.
(This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author | Liu Mengmeng, editor| Tianpeng)