Interface News Reporter | Xiao Fang Yu Hao
Interface News Editor | Wen Shuqi
Previously, most Internet giants implemented flexible office, and it didn't matter much if employees arrived at the company at 11 or even 12 a.m. Since the beginning of this year, strict attendance has become a new rule for many Internet manufacturers. Meituan, Baidu, Beike and other companies require to arrive before 10 a.m., on the grounds that they can find people in the morning office and improve efficiency. According to a Baidu employee, around New Year's Day, the company began to implement a new attendance system, and after a few months, most of the team was able to arrive on time, and occasionally late to report to the supervisor.
But Meituan is different.
Although Meituan did not mention the punishment measures for being late and the relationship between attendance and performance in the notice of all employees, it clearly mentioned that being late was a violation of discipline in an attendance description document, and the punishment standard was also clarified in the violation rules document: 20% of performance will be deducted for being late 2 times a month or less, and 50% for being late for 3 times or more.
The change is obvious. Xiao Wang, an employee of Meituan, told Interface News that after strict attendance, he and his colleagues took more annual leave. The company requires 10 a.m. clock-in, even if it is 10:01 or 10:02 clock-in is considered late, many people are worried that being late will affect the year-end bonus, even if it is only a few minutes late, it is necessary to use half a day of personal leave to deduct, in fact, everyone is still working after taking leave.
Xiao Wang was late several times, and he used his annual leave to deduct. He also found that even if he was a minute or two late, the meal allowance and overtime free taxi at 8 p.m. that day were directly canceled, and even if he worked late overtime, the subsidy could not be applied. After a while, Xiao Wang realized that strict attendance did not help much in actual work output, and the company's greater appeal was to reduce costs, not improve efficiency.
For the new Meituan attendance rules, most of the employees of other Internet giants who are spectators are complaining. The Meituan employees are different, although they are very taboo to discuss the new attendance rules in the company, but everyone is calculating the company's demands and their own gains and losses.
Everyone's mentality began to diverge: some people tried to get more benefits by intensifying involvement, while others became "sober".
A sense of security and relaxation
Before the adjustment of the attendance system, Meituan implemented a 9-hour work system. As long as the working hours are sufficient, even if the attendance is normal, most people are willing to arrive late in the morning and leave work at 90 o'clock in the evening. When the working time is strictly fixed at 10 a.m., leaving work at 90 o'clock in the evening means working 2-3 hours more every day.
Many new graduates want to make a good impression on their boss by dedicating more time to work. Although people may not love this job, they can only get promoted and raised if they make a good impression on their boss.
The fresh graduates who joined Meituan last year have basically not left work on time since the Spring Festival, and they were originally going to go to the gym every day to exercise, but it is actually good to be able to go two or three times a week. In Tuanzi's view, although you can leave work at 7 p.m. according to the company system, it takes more time to do things better and get the boss's affirmation, and this environment is forcing individuals to make such choices.
Danzi said that his work was stressful, but now he did not know whether his choice was correct. She observed that many new employees began to have a mentality of "if others didn't leave, I was embarrassed to go", but after a long time, the work was really tired, and some people left when it was time to leave.
There are many employees in large factories like Tuanzi, and their workplace view is relatively simple - the approval of their bosses is the source of their workplace security. They instinctively think that they will be recognized if they invest more personal time in their work and do it more carefully.
School admissions are highly loyal to Meituan, they are full of good fantasies about work and the workplace, and are willing to pay more personal time to participate in involution games, while companies generally encourage the payment of school enrollment by issuing additional shares.
But Zhang Feng, who has been working in a big factory for several years and has experienced the beautiful fantasy stage of school admissions, still does not get the security he wants. Attendance is just one factor, "What if I put my heart and soul into my work and one day I off?" ”
There are many people with similar mentality to Zhang Feng. Xiao Wang didn't know what to do, but after thinking for a long time, he gave the answer that the company was not so important to him.
After the new attendance rules, there are many people in Xiaowang's department who continue to roll up working hours, but he has set himself a different goal: to avoid being late as much as possible, leaving work on time if there is nothing important, and even if you need to leave work late, you can take out part of the working time to keep for yourself. What used to take 1 day to complete can now be done in 1.5 days, anyway, it's all irrelevant work.
Xiao Wang soon discovered that many people in the company had the same mentality as himself. One noticeable change is that there are more people in the company's gym at lunch and dinner times, about twice as many as before.
Ordinary employees are powerless to change the company's attendance system, and there is not much point in whining, it is better to enrich their lives. If Meituan's new attendance system is regarded as a node, it now seems that its significance is to relax some people.
Zhang Feng no longer works inward with his colleagues. He leaves work more often at 7 p.m., and spends his evenings playing games or chasing dramas, freeing himself from the state of constant fighting. Although the company has clarified the working hours and working hours, there is still room for ambiguity, such as the company's default lunch and lunch break is an hour, in fact, he can rest from 12 o'clock to 2 o'clock.
The more people who relax, the more people will also affect more people. People who leave work that night will also doubt the meaning of their overtime when they see others leaving work on time, or simply join the camp of leaving work on time - some groups begin to resist overtime and leave work on time at 7 p.m.
The company knows everything
Zhang Feng decided to relax, and in addition to the impact of the new attendance rules, he also rationally weighed the pros and cons.
One of the most important reasons is that even if you put all your time and energy into work, the perceived return is very low, and one of the obvious changes is that the promotion cycle becomes longer, the difficulty becomes greater, and the return becomes lower. Today, Meituan has adjusted the promotion twice a year to once a year, and employees need to rush performance at the end of the year, and even take the initiative to take on a lot of work that is not originally their own; The company has more card control conditions for promotion, and employee performance must have double A or an S to apply for promotion. "Even if you cross the threshold and get promoted, and you know that your salary has skyrocketed by 4%, you will feel that this is a very low return on investment."
In a series of adjustments to the attendance and promotion systems, many ordinary employees of large factories have become passive and lost their motivation to be proactive and enterprising, is it because they themselves have subjective assumptions or misunderstandings about the company, or is there a problem in the company's management?
An executive of a major Internet factory told Interface News that the perception of ordinary employees is actually not wrong. From a way of doing things, a relaxed management environment helps employees stay motivated and proactive and come up with more creative ideas, but it also depends on whether the company needs it at this stage. "Attendance, promotion system adjustment are some of the usual management methods, similar methods also include requiring employees to write daily reports, once these methods are used, the speed of both active and passive departures will be accelerated."
An HRBP who has many years of experience in an Internet factory said that when the company's top management wants to reduce costs, it will not pay attention to specific people, whether you are an old employee who has worked in the company for more than ten years, or you are diligent in paying for the company, he only sees the data of each business department, no matter what way it takes, the idea of the top management is the most important.
When the entire Internet industry shouts about cost reduction and efficiency increase, similar management methods are becoming more and more common. According to interface news, there are already many Internet giants who will pay more attention to the balance between business development and cost control when training central management.
Through the form of sand table practical simulation, the course can give the management a more macro perception of the company's development and cost control. According to a person familiar with the company's Tango course, what struck him most deeply was that top talent is helpful to the company's business, but it is not the only factor that determines the company's long-term survival.
This Tango course divides the participants into several groups, each group is a startup, each has a management role, or CEO, CFO, etc., each group starts with hiring to simulate the company's operation, and advances on an annual basis. In this sandbox simulation, talents are divided into several levels, the higher the ability, the more expensive the salary, and each team needs to formulate development strategies, salary systems, teamwork and other content according to their own business model.
"In the first year, each group was crazy to grab people, the group started to move slowly, the A talents were snatched away by other groups, the teams that grabbed high-quality talents bid for the best projects, and there was a low price between each other. We were frustrated, so we had to change our strategy, hire more labor, do outsourcing companies, and make money from low-end jobs in the market. After about five or six years, we found that the teams that recruited A-class talents and got high-quality projects did not make money, but our group was more able to settle accounts, made money, and then used this money to invest in other groups and became VCs. The person familiar with the matter said.
This sandbox simulation is very similar to the process of Internet development, in the early days, companies are crazy to grab people, but after the dividend period, it returns to the traditional company operation, that is, how to reduce costs and improve management efficiency, every industry, every company can not escape such a cycle.
In fact, employees repeatedly calculate the return on investment of trade-offs, and the company has already calculated it.
After the Internet enters the second half, companies are looking for the next growth area, but it is difficult, the people familiar with the matter said. It can only be said that a company that is well managed can stretch the company's upward and downward curve longer.
Cross the river by feeling the stones
On Meituan's intranet, employees are also more or less involved in the company's management discussions, and a recent post with relatively high hits is "Wang Huiwen Four Kills".
"Wang Huiwen Four Kills" is a management term proposed by Wang Huiwen, co-founder of Meituan, in 2018, but with the implementation of the company's various management efficiency improvement systems, it is perceived and understood by more and more grassroots employees.
"Wang Huiwen Four Kills" is based on the Davis double kill effect. The latter is a double effect between market expectations and price fluctuations of listed companies, that is, when a company is no longer a growth stock, the decline in net profit per share leads to a decline in the stock price, and the decline in the stock price leads to a decline in the price-earnings ratio, which has a multiplier effect and eventually leads to a collapse in the stock price. In Chinese Internet companies, the situation is more serious than the Davis double-kill effect: the departure of large-scale excellent employees leads to a decline in the company's ability to do a good job in user experience, which is the third kill; Because of the decline in user experience ability, resulting in further deterioration of the entire user reputation, public opinion and the public will think that hacking this company has become a politically correct behavior, no matter what the company is doing right or wrong, everyone thinks it is wrong, which is the fourth kill.
Although no one in the comment area associated this theory with the new attendance rules, and no one discussed it much, everyone understood that Lao Wang successfully predicted the present of many big factories.
"Wang Huiwen Four Kills" is actually the business maturity or downward period, how the company deals with the problem of performance, business and employee relations: if the company wants to make good profits, it can only reduce costs and improve efficiency, and reduce employee salary costs and benefits; Employees' loose workspaces are squeezed, more investment returns less, and enthusiasm for work is reduced or even lost.
To put it more simply, when the company is in a period of growth, the interests of the company and employees are aligned, the company needs excellent talents to contribute ideas, quickly implement it, and the efforts of employees can bring the company a valuation of tens of times or hundreds of times; When the company is in a mature or downward period, outstanding talents no longer produce earth-shaking effects, the company pays more attention to cost and profit management, the interests of both sides are no longer consistent, and contradictions are revealed.
A few years ago, some founders of Internet giants shouted the slogan of becoming a century-old enterprise. In fact, the test of being a century-old enterprise is not in the period of business expansion, but in the mature period and downward period of the business and industry. Only after a complete life cycle can enterprises be qualified to talk about how to do a century-old enterprise. Chinese Internet technology companies have only a history of more than 20 years, and their experience lies more in how to gain more market share and how to defeat competitors during the expansion period, and no one knows the answer to the problems mentioned in the "Wang Huiwen Four Kills" in the process of reducing costs and improving efficiency in the mature and downward periods.
Recently, Zhihu has a hot question: "The company is seriously short of people and almost chaotic, but the boss has very harsh recruitment conditions, what is the reason?" One of the anonymous responses is very memorable:
I used to be in a small company. In 2018, can you think of a boss who wants to hire a programmer with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan? However, it was recruited, and it was done very well, and in just half a year, the boss made a lot of money and bought two sets of Tomson Yipin in our city. The programmer with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan felt that he should raise his salary, but the boss did not give the increase, he left, and the company closed down in a short time. However, this boss did not lose ah, and later he went to matchmaking.
In a full cycle, most companies end up similarly to this small company. Even in the tech Internet industry, which is only 20 years old, we have witnessed many companies plummeting from their peaks to disappearing completely.
When the entire industry is in a mature period, the problem is left to several Internet giants: how to survive the difficult period of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and key employees have left one after another, and find the next opportunity for scientific and technological innovation?
Technology companies such as Microsoft and Sony have already given answers, and the answers of Chinese Internet companies are the beginning of their long-term ism.