Written | Wen Yehao
Edit the | Wu Xianzhi
On February 14, 2022, Ctrip announced that it will implement a hybrid office system company-wide.
Specifically, since March 1, every Wednesday and Friday, each business unit and functional department of the company can implement or gradually implement a 1-2-day mixed office according to the actual management needs.
In recent years, from "wolf culture" to "996 blessings", the Internet industry has mostly inevitably fallen into an internal tide. Under the pressure, more and more people are shouting "escape from the big factory" and "lie flat", but most of them are still involuntarily trapped in it, tired but dare not really escape.
Therefore, as soon as the news came out, the world's workers burst into tears and cast envious glances at Ctrip. But Ctrip's move is obviously not to harvest tears, as an old giant, taking the lead in innovation, there may be a deeper consideration behind it.
Carrying the banner of "anti-inner volume"?
Since the term "inner volume" was written into internet discourse, the discussion around it has never stopped.
In fact, the formation of the inner volume is the inevitable fading of the Dividend of the Internet Industry and the arrival of bottlenecks. The Internet industry, which rubs the dividends of the times, has continuously attracted high-quality talents from all walks of life to pour in. Today's oversaturated talent cannot match the slowing growth curve, and internal competition is naturally becoming more and more intense.
Until recent years, "anti-internal roll" has gradually become the mainstream, and more and more people are reluctant to continue to be reduced to the screws of large factories.
The accumulation of public opinion, coupled with the pressure of regulatory compliance, ultimately dominated the fate of the workers. In the middle of 2021, Kuaishou and Byte successively cancelled the "Big and Small Week"; at the end of the year, Tencent and Ali successively launched employee care plans, and "anti-inner volume" seems to replace "inner volume" and become the trend of the Internet industry in 2021.
However, the abolition of "big and small weeks" means lower pay, and so-called care plans are often aimed at specific groups of people, which seem to be an observation of employees, but in fact still reveal the dark side of capital. In contrast, Ctrip's mixed office system, which has nothing to do with salary distribution, seems to be more conscientious.
If it is to show conscience under the rising sun, it is not doubtful.
It should be pointed out that the current Internet industry as a whole is in a cold winter, Ctrip itself is unable to escape the whirlpool of losses, so at this juncture, it is unusual to hold high the banner of "anti-internal volume", what is the medicine sold in Liang Jianzhang's gourd?
In this regard, Liang Jianzhang incarnated as a scholar and counted the contributions of the mixed office model to reducing traffic congestion, protecting the environment, promoting fertility, and alleviating high housing prices and regional differences. At the company level, he said, the system could reduce employee turnover, improve employee satisfaction and loyalty, and reduce labor costs.
Liang Jianzhang's theoretical support may come from Ctrip's hybrid office experiments from August 2021, before which Ctrip had conducted a large-scale social experiment on its Shanghai call center, which showed that working from home can indeed improve work efficiency and happiness, but another cost is that the promotion rate based on performance as an evaluation index has been reduced by 50%.
Therefore, Liang Jianzhang mainly mentioned the positive side of the mixed office model, and in the actual implementation process, inertia is the weakness of human nature, and remote work away from the physical limitations of the company will greatly test the self-control and corporate governance ability of employees.
In addition, the communication brought about by remote work is also one of the shackles of this model. In Ctrip's early experiments, nearly half of the employees who worked from home eventually decided to return to the company, the main reason for which was not only poor performance, but also the second significant problem was the communication barrier in the workplace.
Although the current online office software has become more and more perfect, the effect of remote communication is still not as good as face-to-face communication. Unless Ctrip signs a contract with Convinced, it is undoubtedly a great challenge to the management ability of the enterprise to leave the environment of supervision and weakened communication.
Inside and out, Ctrip seems to be no longer a capitalist with a mask of hypocrisy, but a gracious partner for workers. But is that really the case? As we all know, the most fundamental motivation of enterprises is to pursue profits, even under the tide of "anti-internal roll", Ctrip does not seem to have such a reason for drastic reform.
Therefore, behind the push for decision-makers to let go, there may be a deeper reason hidden.
Liang Jianzhang's ambitions
In fact, in the global context of the new crown virus, the remote work system has become a new office model for some foreign enterprises.
In October 2020, Microsoft internally released "flexible workplace" guidelines that allow employees to work remotely no more than half of the working hours per week, and employees can even choose to work remotely permanently after approval. Similarly, in May 2021, Google also announced a permanent telecommuting plan involving 20% of the company's employees.
Previously affected by the epidemic, domestic companies have also briefly tested the waters of remote work, but in the end they failed to follow the pace of Microsoft and Google and push it to normal.
Therefore, the behavior of foreign companies cannot become the underlying support for Ctrip's adoption of the hybrid office model, after all, the domestic soil has not bred a precedent, and Ctrip may want to become the first Internet factory in China to eat crabs.
We believe that Ctrip dares to deviate from the tide and bite the first bite of crab, one is to go with the flow, and the other is to seek room for growth. In addition, there may be consideration of gaining positive public opinion and increasing public favorability.
First of all, Ctrip is not a "wolf culture" company. A former employee of Ctrip's business department said: "Ctrip's internal workplace veterans are gathered, the social atmosphere is very strong, many ideas can not be pushed, but will be complained about too hard ..."
Secondly, the sudden outbreak of the new crown epidemic has also caused a huge impact on the OTA business on which Ctrip depends.
According to Ctrip's financial report, in the four quarters of 2020, its GMV decreased by 51%, 72%, 51% and 45% respectively compared with the same period last year. In 2021, Ctrip once turned a loss into a profit, but due to the repeated outbreak of the epidemic in some parts of China, Ctrip fell into a dilemma again in the third quarter of 2021.
According to the financial report, Ctrip's total revenue in the first three quarters of 2021 only recovered to 56% of the same period in 2019, although objectively speaking, this is related to the fact that its outbound travel business has not yet recovered, but at the time of market downturn, the workload of Ctrip's business department is obviously not the same.
The office atmosphere is more relaxed, the business shrinkage has led to a lower workload, and Ctrip is obviously more rational for mixed office.
On the other hand, Ctrip's implementation of hybrid office may also be related to its desire for business growth.
Looking at Ctrip's announcement, one of the notable points is that the so-called hybrid office is not working from home, but can be selected by employees. Even, Ctrip deliberately emphasized after the description: "It can be a café or a resort hotel." ”
"Cafe" as a daily office scene can still be understood, but "resort hotel" as a word written in the announcement, still can't help but make people think. It is reasonable to guess that Ctrip's move may be imposing a psychological hint that "there is no clear boundary between working days and holidays".
A Ctrip insider once said: "Telecommuting and hybrid work are conducive to the resumption of leisure tourism in China. And this may reflect Liang Jianzhang's Sima Zhao's heart.
Liang Jianzhang once said in an interview with the media: "I hope that hybrid office will become the standard, not only Ctrip's implementation. Based on this, Ctrip seems to want to become the "leader" of the hybrid office model, bringing about a wave of mixed office.
And what does hybrid office mean for Ctrip? From its announcement, we may be able to see some clues.
Judging from the description, Ctrip's mixed office time is set at Every Wednesday and Friday, and Friday can form a 3-day "holiday" together with the weekend, and there are about 50 such work weeks a year. This means that if the mixed office becomes a trend, all the employees of the company will get 50 "small long holidays".
The "small long holiday" with a large base has the characteristics of short and flat, which also coincides with the focus of the force clearly mentioned in Ctrip's prospectus - "high-frequency short-distance peripheral travel".
According to Ctrip's "Insights on New Trends in User Travel in 2021", the number of tourists who purchased high-speed rail train tickets within 2 hours of Ctrip in 2021 increased by nearly 30% year-on-year, especially in small and long holidays, short-distance high-speed rail tours are highly sought after by the travel crowd.
According to the third quarter of 2021, Ctrip's hotel bookings in the province increased by about 35% compared with 2019 before the epidemic, of which local hotel bookings increased by more than 60%.
It can be seen that the short-distance travel brought about by the small long holiday has become a new driving force for Ctrip's growth. Ctrip's two major revenue channels, accommodation reservation and transportation ticketing, are also closely integrated with high-frequency short-distance tours.
Therefore, Ctrip's implementation of hybrid office, the bright line is to improve the company's welfare and solve social problems, the dark line is to hope to bring up the mixed office trend, pry the tourism market, and it as an OTA leader to enjoy this huge cake.
end
As an established giant, Ctrip has undoubtedly fallen into a growth dilemma under the impact of new forces in recent years. The stirring of the epidemic has also added great uncertainty to its way forward.
In this context, hoping that mixed office will drive short-distance travel has become a breakthrough for Ctrip to seek increments, after all, short-distance travel is less affected by the epidemic and the frequency is high enough.
However, the above analysis is based on an optimistic perspective. After all, if remote work is conceived as a holiday, then the imposition of mixed office under the premise of consistent workload will lead to a sharp increase in tasks during the on-the-job period and accelerate the internal volume.
On the other hand, even if the hybrid office model is rolled out, other companies may not move the salary chassis like Ctrip, and once the income is reduced due to remote work, the people in the big factory will inevitably not accept it. Previously, after ByteDance canceled the size week, some employees were indignant because of the decline in salaries.
Therefore, Ctrip's move is more of an idealism. On its own, it may be difficult to drive the transformation of the entire Internet industry environment. Even Ctrip itself will increase the steep wall because of the first crab to eat.
But even so, Ctrip has implemented the mixed office throughout, which is both helpless and like a broken boat. This slightly old giant seems to be staging a different kind of survival drama.