How to treat older employees, veteran technology companies seem to be difficult to give a model. Last week, Samsung and IBM, who are more than half a hundred years old, conveyed two very different attitudes.
On February 16, South Korean media reported that Samsung will implement the "Advanced Tracking Program" from 2022. The so-called advanced tracking program is to allow excellent employees to continue to work after the retirement age (60 years old).
For the initiative, Samsung said it is responding to changes in the business environment such as an aging population and a population cliff. It wants to create a culture that respects the expertise and experience of its employees.
When Samsung gained good feelings, IBM attracted much attention because of "bad mouth".
On Feb. 11, IBM executives called the older employee "baby dinosaurs" in an internal email and discussed plans to make it an "extinct species," according to public litigation documents.
In the public filing, IBM showed uneasiness that the company's millennial staff ratio lagged behind that of competitors, and it seemed like a good idea to let the "dinosaur baby" leave and invite millennials to join.
Workers with age anxiety feel insecure like a roller coaster: one moment up and one down. It seems difficult to say whether the future self will be a respected "old gentleman" or a discarded "baby dinosaur".
A
Samsung's description of an aging population and a cliff is a challenge for global businesses.
According to a research report released by Deutsche Bank in 2019, it was the first time that the world's population over the age of 65 exceeded the population under the age of 5. If that number isn't impactful enough, take a look at the median age: According to the United Nations, south Korea's median age in 2015 was 40.8 years old, which means that half of the entire country is over the age of 40.8. The highest figure over the same period was japan, at 46.5 years, while China's median age in 2015 was 37 years.
According to forecasts, by 2050, the median age of Japan will exceed 50 years old, China will reach 49.6 years old, and the median age of Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and other European and American countries will be in their early 40s.
Allowing employees to continue to shine after the age of 60 is indeed, as Samsung says, a measure to combat aging.
Samsung has rarely had negative news for older employees. In 2019, when the liquid crystal display (LCD) panel market was sluggish, Samsung Display Company launched an "early retirement plan" that employees who have worked for more than five years can apply. Employees who retire early are compensated accordingly, including two-and-a-half or three-year wages, and applicants with children can also receive compensation of about RMB59,000 and their children's pre-university tuition fees.
The move is actually Samsung cutting the number of employees, and by March 2020, Samsung announced that it will gradually shut down the LCD panel business. In May, Samsung Displays said it had received more and more "early retirement" applications from its employees.
On the other hand, IBM, a century-old company, tears between it and older employees will be staged from time to time.
The information released this time, which contains the "baby dinosaur" remarks, is actually the latest development in the 2018 lawsuit against IBM.
In 2018, IBM laid off nearly 10,000 employees over the age of 40, and the ongoing lawsuit between the previous employee and IBM.
In addition to the "baby dinosaur" remarks, another email from an IBM executive mentioned an "outdated women workforce" within the company: "They really don't understand socializing or participating, they're not digital natives." It is a real threat for us. ”
Direct layoffs are only part of the way, and according to public documents, IBM is also suspected of "disguised layoffs", such as trying to achieve layoffs by moving old employees to other office locations, but the acceptance rate of relocation is only 8% to 10%."
IBM, of course, is in denial. IBM spokesman Adam Earlat explained: "Older employees leave because of a shift in the business environment and changes in market demand for certain skills, not because of their age. ”
Translated, you were fired because you were incompetent, not because you were older.
As for the emails that were made public, he euphanistically admitted that the wording was inappropriate, but also said that the executives who wrote the emails all left in 2020.
In addition, Eulert provided data to prove that IBM did not discriminate against older employees. From 2010 to 2020, IBM hired more than 10,000 people over the age of 50 in the United States, he said; in those years, the median age of the company's employees was 48. But he also declined to say what percentage of the older employees were.
IBM has always been somewhat ruthless in its treatment of older employees. In a 2019 age-discrimination lawsuit, Alan Wald, IBM's former vice president of human resources, testified that IBM fired older employees in order to make itself "cooler" and more "stylish" — like Amazon and Google.
Even IBM Consulting, which conducted a survey, said in the report that "millennials are generally more innovative and more receptive to technology than baby boomers." "Baby boomers, in the United States, refer to people born between World War II and the early 1960s.
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If in the spirit of learning from its predecessors, the practice of IBM, an established technology company, is obviously enough to make China's technology Internet workers uneasy.
In China, "the Internet is not middle-aged" has become a terrible urban legend, whether true or false, the 35-year-old red line is in the hearts of many people.
And China's Internet giants are still very young, NetEase was founded in 1997, Tencent and Sohu were founded in 1998, Ali was founded in 1999, Baidu was founded in 2000, Byte was founded in 2012, Pinduoduo was founded in 2015... The path they have to take is the same path that the established technology companies have taken.
In 2020, Pulse released the "Internet Talent Flow Report 2020", showing that the average age of employees in 19 companies, including Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu, Byte, Didi, JD.com, Xiaomi, and Pinduoduo, is 29.5 years old. Among them, the average age of employees in Huawei and Alibaba is 31 years old, and Pinduoduo and Byte are only 27 years old.
It must be noted that this is the average age, which is affected by the highest and lowest age groups.
The "elderly employee optimization incident" that caused large-scale discussion in China came from Huawei in 2017. In February of that year, a netizen named "How good is the same boat in the wind and rain" posted that his annual salary in his thirties had been optimized. Almost at the same time, news circulated on the Internet that Huawei cleaned up employees over the age of 34.
Whether Huawei has concentrated on cleaning up older employees is still a mystery. But the resulting age anxiety is uncontrollably pervading in the technology Internet industry.
At the time, two voices about the incident are still highly representative today: one side believes that companies should not ruthlessly discard older employees, and the other side believes that private companies are not nursing homes. The latter view actually coincides with IBM's self-defense: he was fired because of ability, not age.
In the five years since 2017, the incident of "optimizing older employees" in the technology Internet has continued the same pattern: online rumors, heated discussions, official uncertainty, and the anxiety that pervades employees has become more and more serious.
At the same time, the pursuit of "cadre rejuvenation" by various enterprises does not need to be hidden, which also stimulates people's age concerns.
In 2019, Baidu Chairman Robin Li stressed through an internal letter: "In 2019, the company will accelerate the process of young cadres, and select more young people after 80 and 90 to enter the management at the same time." ”
In the same year, Tencent dismissed 10% of middle-level cadres, and JD.com also proposed to eliminate 10% of executives above the vice president level in the last place.
Both the grassroots and the management seem to be facing the impact of "rising stars". As Tencent President Martin Lau said at the time: "In the cadre system, we hope that there must be mobility, so that there will be a new position for the rising star." The elimination of our cadre system will be further intensified, requiring a certain proportion of management cadres to retire every year. ”
Everyone is talking about how to "not be optimized", and "retirement" is a topic that is rarely mentioned.
Last year, Tencent took the lead in breaking the silence by proposing a "career milestone" care plan, in which employees who have worked at Tencent for 15 years can apply for "early retirement" and receive a large return.
Once "early retirement" is chosen, employees can enjoy three benefits: customized souvenirs, long-term service thank you, and retirement honors. Among them, the long-term service thank you payment is a fixed salary of 6 months; the retirement honorary payment has two schemes: "service period" and "50% unbanned stock options", and employees can freely choose one of them.
Although under the anxiety of optimization, this benefit is called "the end point that cannot be run", but the first discussion of the end point is undoubtedly meaningful.
From a global perspective, how to treat older employees in innovative technology Internet companies, and whether the future of practitioners is fragrant or "extinct species", is still inconclusive. I only hope that the discussion of the end point will be more and louder, rather than turning heads and ears in the vague urban legends, burying one's head in the fog.