Liu Qiangdong: Don't expel my brother! But "brothers" can be redefined

Chief Business Review

2024-05-29 16:16Posted on the official account of Shanghai Chief Business Review

Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, has swiped the screen again.

Last weekend, a "wolf lecture" conducted by Liu Qiangdong within JD.com sparked a wide discussion on the whole network. Dong Ge said in the video: JD.com can never allow a large number of employees to "lie down and sleep", and also said that "it's not my brother if you don't work hard". In fact, before Liu Qiangdong's speech, Jingdong was already deeply involved in a layoff turmoil, and a series of events such as internal attendance adjustment, shortened lunch break, and personnel optimization also caused many people to complain on the Internet.

According to media reports, an internal survey by JD.com showed that 14,000 people were asked to check in on their behalf every month. Dongge angrily sprayed the employees lying flat, perhaps because he couldn't stand the slackness of some employees.

However, Liu Qiangdong's "new brother theory" still aroused ridicule from many netizens. Some netizens picked up that in an event in 2018, when Liu Qiangdong responded to the outside world's rumors about JD's layoffs, he said, "JD is still developing at a rapid pace, we still need people, and we will never fire any brothers."

Nowadays, many netizens have linked these two paragraphs together, thinking that the current Dongge has treated the employees who are lying flat as brothers, and if they are not brothers, of course there will be reasons to fire them, and it can be seen that Dongge's logical chain has always been very rigorous, but he has not slapped his face.

Of course, there are more rigorous financial report data, in the face of the huge impact of Douyin's live broadcast with goods, and Pinduoduo's counterattack in the domestic and foreign markets, JD.com's weak performance growth has indeed made Dongge anxious.

Just yesterday, some media broke the news that JD Health's JD Family Medicine Division was completely laid off, which also attracted widespread attention.

So, compared with other Internet giants, what is the problem with Dongge's "brothers" in JD.com? What new strategic adjustments does Dongge's "brother theory" reveal about JD.com?

There are too many "brothers" of Dong Ge?

Those familiar with China's Internet circle know that Liu Qiangdong has always had a good reputation for treating employees. In a CCTV interview, Liu Qiangdong called his employees "brothers", and generously said that his company would never find an outsourcing company to deduct employees' social security, and Dongge said that such income is "shameful".

There is also a policy of tolerance for old employees within JD.com, and there is even a saying that JD.com has won the "gold medal for avoiding death" after three years, and employees with poor performance and low willingness to work have been retained. A few years ago, Liu Qiangdong often said that "I have been thinking about doing something for my brothers".

However, time has passed, and Liu Qiangdong has to face the old problems of many large enterprises. There are too many brothers you need to raise.

According to media statistics, Pinduoduo, which has a quarterly revenue of 86.8 billion, currently has only 13,000 employees. Alibaba, which owns multiple Internet tracks such as Ant Financial and Alibaba Cloud, has only 225,000 employees, but how many employees does JD.com have? JD.com's financial reports for the past three years show that its total number of employees has increased from 390,000 to 540,000 from 2021 to 2023. What is the concept of 540,000 employees? JD.com has more employees than several leading Internet companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent combined.

From the perspective of business management, Liu Qiangdong really needs to raise too many "brothers". During the same period, JD.com's revenue was far less than that of Alibaba and Pinduoduo. If the per capita operating profit is calculated, Pinduoduo is 55 times that of JD.com. In terms of manpower efficiency and cost control, Dongge's "brothers" are obviously dragging their feet.

Among Liu Qiangdong's 540,000 employees, JD.com's own logistics system and customer service team account for a large part, and many JD.com's logistics brothers and customer service sisters are counted among JD.com's hundreds of thousands of "brothers".

About JD.com,Another hot search is that the media revealed that JD.com has formulated 8 new attendance rules,Including encouraging employees to report that they don't put in work around them,For this post that suddenly became a hot search,JD.com announced that it had called the police for the rumor。

However, in the face of netizens' doubts, JD.com's PR seems to be different from Dongge's wolf reprimand, and he tries his best to deny that he has become a sweatshop. In fact, in 2021, Pinduoduo also encountered similar problems, with a blogger claiming that Pinduoduo "restricts employees' time to go to the toilet, and if they take leave, they must work overtime to make up for the missing working hours, and other strange restrictions.

However, unlike JD.com, Pinduoduo's approach at that time was to immediately dismiss the employee who broke the news, and then deny all the accusations. Judging from the results, Pinduoduo is indeed doing well and doing the right thing, but if the growth slows down, the internal contradictions will also be exposed, and then it will be said that it is wrong, so the enterprise should constantly adjust according to the stage, and there may be different choices at different stages, and it is difficult to have a standard answer.

Not the first time that a knife was fired on the "brothers".

Since 2020, Liu Qiangdong has begun to fade out of the media vision, and even talked about retirement for a while. However, in 2022, Dongge will return strongly after the epidemic, and the goal is still the "brothers" around him.

In 2023, some media reported that Liu Qiangdong scolded the management at an internal meeting, believing that "executives talk too much about bells and whistles, but too little about cost, efficiency, and experience", and also pointed out that JD.com's executives are deviating from the core business strategy of "cost, efficiency, and experience".

Since May, executives who used to be brothers and sisters with Liu Qiangdong have left JD.com. Among them are not only Yu Rui, CEO of JD Logistics, Wang Xiaosong, senior vice president of JD for 15 years, and Xu Lei, former CEO of JD Group, also "honorably" retired.

In 2023, the returning Liu Qiangdong began a drastic business reform. The three major divisions of computer digital, communications, and home appliances were adjusted into the home appliance and home furnishing business group and the computer communication business group. In August, it was announced that the threshold for free shipping of self-operated goods would be lowered, and at the same time, marketing efforts would be increased on Double 11.

However, Dongge's reforms have had little effect, and JD.com still shows signs of slowing down in performance growth. In the third quarter of 2023, JD.com's e-commerce market share was 16.2%, down 1.4% year-on-year.

In December 2023, his brother who has been fighting side by side for ten years, Xin Lijun, vice president of JD.com, announced his resignation.

Executives left in droves, and JD.com was in a growth dilemma. Dongge, who has returned, is obviously in a hurry, so this year not only did he open the knife to the executives, but the anger was finally sent to ordinary employees. However, whether it is the executives' backing or the adjustment of attendance, it is only to cover up the problem, and it cannot solve the current problem of JD.com.

In addition to Pinduoduo's squeeze on JD's market share in the e-commerce field, the 2023 financial report shows that JD.com's new business revenue, including Jingxi and overseas businesses, is 3.818 billion yuan, which is also down 24% year-on-year. The shrinkage of new businesses such as going overseas has also largely determined the recent sluggish performance of JD.com in the capital market.

Dong Ge and Jingdong are not lying?

Liu Qiangdong is undoubtedly the most grassroots and charlatan boss in China's Internet entrepreneurship circle. Whether it is the inspirational entrepreneurship in the early years or the various scandals later, Dongge always has a heroic flavor compared with Ma Yun and Ma Huateng.

This wave of "brotherhood" has undoubtedly had a lot of impact on JD.com's image. In fact, before the speech emphasizing performance and internal management, Liu Qiangdong also needed a wave of salary increase decisions for procurement and sales employees. JD.com announced that from July 1, 2024, the annual fixed salary of procurement and sales employees will be increased from 16 to 20 salaries, and there will be no cap on performance incentives.

In addition, Jingdong Group also applied for the purchase and sale of Lao Liu, Lao Liu's live broadcast room and Lao Liu's recommended trademarks, and released the "Jingdong Red" video to show the deeds of the procurement and sales staff. Coupled with the digital people in his previous paragraph, Dong Ge undoubtedly broke his heart for JD.com.

In an internal letter in December last year, Liu Qiangdong said, "Of course, I mismanaged so many problems, and I blame myself very much." But in any case, I will not lie flat, and I hope that the brothers will not lie flat, now the organization is large, bloated and inefficient, and it does take time to change. ”

 "Big company disease" is actually the inevitable stage development bottleneck of many large enterprises, Jingdong recalls the fighting spirit of the brothers in its own way, and Dongge is obviously the original intention of calling many employees to start a business.

In the history of China's Internet companies, Alibaba, Bytes, and even Pinduoduo, the diseases of large enterprises have always been with us, and of course, these problems are also with the development anxiety of enterprises.

For Jingdong at the moment,More important than shouting is to recognize yourself,Whether it is the business system or the employee management system,Identify real brothers and fake brothers from the system,It is of substantial significance to the development of the enterprise。

Coincidentally, in April this year, a year after Ali launched the "1+6+N" reform and reorganization, Ma Yun also said in an internal letter: "It's not to catch up with KPIs, but to recognize yourself and return to the track of customer value." ”

It can be seen that in the face of the vast market, the head Internet once had boundless ambitions, but after experiencing savage growth, how to complete the incentive and distribution, and carry out sustainable development is a difficult problem.

Some media people said frankly that the employees of any large enterprise are never the "brothers" of the boss, and the boss calls you "brother" to be polite, but many netizens still take it seriously.

Some media broke the news that Dongge has lived overseas in recent years, even if he has a CEO, he has to enter some business groups, and often sends voice messages late at night to arrange business, and the person who is @ is often Alexander, under such a length of working hours, only talking about clocking in and out, not talking about off-duty and overtime hours, it is indeed unfair to workers.

The recent celebrity Zhou Hongyi also expressed his opinion, he believes that the enterprise has reached a certain stage, it is a contract cooperation model, not to call brothers and sisters, according to the contract to distribute profits, everyone is in business, it is relatively simple and clear, there will not be so many quarrels.

Therefore, since Dong Ge thinks that he has some problems with management, he also needs to consider the management model, in addition to punching in, how to screen good coins and motivate those brothers who really contribute has become the key.

It is undeniable that in the face of internal problems, Jingdong is also the first batch of Internet manufacturers to find problems and face them directly, and what is more valuable is that Dongge also made the problem public and put on a fighting posture, and we should continue to look forward to the performance of Liu Qiangdong and the Jingdong brothers in the future.

In short, in our opinion, if we want to call on everyone to fight together, we must either divide the benefits according to the workload according to the contract, or simply return to the leader to lead everyone to fight together.

What do you think of Liu Qiangdong's speech? Are you optimistic about JD.com? Welcome to the message area to discuss!

Resources

1, Liu Qiangdong sharply criticized the phenomenon of "lying flat": People who have poor long-term performance and never work hard are not my brothers! The Paper

2. Liu Qiangdong stepped down from everything, FN Business

3. To cure the disease of large enterprises, we can't just rely on Liu Qiangdong's reflection, Beijing Business Daily

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