Author 丨 Xie Xuan
Editor 丨Fang Yu
Image source 丨 Figure worm
"Don't go to some platforms and complain." At the same time as receiving the new rank and incentive regulations released by the Us group, Wang Han and his colleagues also received verbal warnings from department heads, hoping that they would not go to external platforms to speak anonymously.
In October 2020, Meituan announced through the intranet that under the premise of ensuring the competitiveness of employee salaries and salary increases, a new grade and incentive system based on the principle of "flat grades and broadband salaries" will be implemented from 2021.
For Wang Han, who has worked in the US group for nearly 4 years, such an adjustment has brought about an increasingly difficult promotion future, but looking around, the workplace environment of other large factories may not be better. "I've adapted to 995 here, and I really don't want to go to another company, 996."
Flat structure is a form of management advocated by large companies, but it may have a different meaning for individuals seeking promotion in the workplace.
Flattening, is it a blessing or a curse?
On one side is the merger of grades, and on the other side is the large-scale recruitment plan of the US group.
According to late reports, in 2021, the recruitment scale of Meituan may reach 60,000 people, and at the same time, Meituan plans to introduce 6,000 to 10,000 people through school recruitment. According to the estimate of meituan's human resources department, the company will naturally outflow 20,000 people this year.
Based on years of experience in dealing with the IT Internet industry, Yang Lei, vice president of Hudson Group in Greater China and national general manager of the information technology industry, believes that the argument of "pulling down labor costs" is slightly biased.
In his view, the fundamental purpose of meituan's adjustment of rank and salary strategy should be to optimize and adjust the talent ladder. Reduce the frequency of promotions, increase the opportunity for salary adjustments, and unbind promotions and salary increases in order to provide a more flexible system for multi-level talents.
Unbundling promotions and salary adjustments, and increasing the frequency of salary increases, so that enterprises have more means of talent rewards. Especially for enterprises like Meituan, which still maintain a big stride, flexible talent allocation means are particularly important.
As Meituan explained in the open letter: "Under the increasingly detailed and standardized rules, the current grade system is not flexible enough to support talent development, and it can no longer well adapt to the development demands of multi-service and multi-channel employees." ”
At the 2020 World Internet Conference, Xia Huaxia, vice president and chief scientist of Meituan, said that Meituan has a total of 200 businesses. Wang Puzhong, senior vice president of Meituan and president of the Home Business Group, said in a group visit in 2017 that even if Meituan makes the organization chaotic and redundant in the short term, it will never give up the opportunity.
Even, some insiders pointed out that with Meituan's ambitions in the retail industry, its goal of recruiting 60,000 people is only the beginning. This speed of business expansion requires enterprises to have a more flexible and highly adaptable talent salary structure. "Internally, you can deal with external poaching pressure through simple salary adjustments; externally, high-paying recruitment can also relieve the pressure on the job level."
"If I were the boss, I would do the same." Mia, a recruitment expert at the headhunting company Atomic Group, believes that the complex rank structure for enterprises, in addition to means a lot of communication costs and administrative costs, is not conducive to motivating the subjective initiative of employees.
For individuals, such a system can lead to polarization: for those who want to achieve rapid promotion, they may choose to jump ship; for those seeking stability, they will have to accept salary increases, while the rank will maintain the same career prospects for a long time. But she also acknowledges that this stability requires employees to have a good mindset and sound business skills, "as well as some luck."
Flattening is an inevitable choice for enterprises to run fast, but for individuals, it is mixed.
Backward "271" and "361"
Compared with the Meituan group, which has gradually tightened its personnel assessment, Ali's enterprises have unexpectedly moved towards relaxation.
According to Cainiao employees, Cainiao has abolished the previous mandatory low performance score system.
In fact, as early as the end of December 2020, it was reported that Tong Wenhong, CPO of Alibaba Group, announced in an internal forum that the mandatory "361" appraisal system would be abolished, that is, the mandatory direct leadership would be abolished to give 10% of employees a low performance score (≤3.25) of the hard appraisal indicators.
For the different strategies of Ali-based enterprises and Meituan, Wang Han is not impressed, in his view, this is a chain reaction caused by a series of policy suppressions such as ants listing blocked and Ali being fined. "Unlike companies that have already been listed like Meituan, companies that cannot be listed in the short term need to retain talents with more relaxed systems and preferential treatment."
In November 2020, on the eve of the listing of Ant Group, due to many major impacts such as the financial technology regulatory environment, Ant Group urgently stepped on the brakes and suspended its IPO plans on the Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Board and Hong Kong stocks.
This suspension is more than half a year. During this period, Alibaba was fined 18.2 billion yuan for monopolistic behavior, which led to a loss of 7.663 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, which was the first quarterly loss suffered by Alibaba since its listing in 2014. This is also regarded by the industry as an important sign that Ali has been unfavorable for many years.
In Mia's view, unlike companies like Meituan, which are still aggressively exploring new businesses, the model of Alibaba-related enterprises such as Cainiao, Taobao, and Alibaba Cloud has stabilized. As a result, the grade system, salary and talent policy have become more stable.
The cancellation of the 361 system has a part of the stable talent strategy adopted in response to market fluctuations, and the bigger reason may be that 361 itself is a backward human resources system, which not only does not apply to the management of post-90s and post-95 employees, but also ignores the ups and downs of people's state. This cancellation is essentially a correction of past problems.
In the 1980s, under the leadership of CEO Jack Welch, GM entered the ranks of the world's most valuable companies. The "vitality curve" theory proposed by him has also become the most classic human resource management model: "vitality curve" is based on the principle of normal distribution, according to the proportion of 20% of excellent personnel, 10% of poor personnel and 70% of qualified personnel, and the backward 10% of employees are forced to be eliminated.
Image source: Reconstructing Performance: Shaping Organizational Capabilities with Team Performance
In this way, GE employees have maintained their passion and vitality, hence the name of the vitality curve.
In 2001, Guan Mingsheng, who had worked at GM for 17 years in the United States, joined Alibaba and brought with him the system of GE. On this basis, Ma Yun applied the martial arts culture to form a unique Ali culture. As a result, the "271 system" derived from the "vitality curve" was also implemented.
Years later, the "271 system" gradually evolved into the "361 system". Although the proportion of star employees has risen from 20% to 30%, the proportion of last-place eliminations of 10% is still strong.
Driven by Ali, the talent management concept of ability rating and last-place elimination took root in China's Internet circle.
After nearly 20 years of running this system, Ali, who has grown into a behemoth, has personally ended the system.
One accelerates energy storage, one takes advantage of the opportunity to correct deviations
"Meituan and Ali represent two different types of enterprises: Meituan continues to expand vigorously, the company is still in the stage of capacity reserve, and it needs to absorb and precipitate the ability of employees through a large number of personnel flows; Ali enterprises often complete the ability reserve, and enterprises can already empower employees by refining the division of labor and optimizing the talent management system."
In the view of part-time cat human resources experts, behind the measures of meituan to reduce ranks, it is actually a problem faced by many large enterprises in terms of efficiency output and fairness of salary ranges.
In reality, it is very difficult to practice the concept of "the same ability, the same platform, and the same output". When dividing the capabilities of employees, it is difficult to achieve a differentiated judgment of fine graininess.
On the other hand, a small improvement in employee capabilities does not necessarily form an effective output. Therefore, reducing the meticulous division of capabilities, increasing the proportion of salary adjustments, and opening up the income gap between employees at different levels are also the advocacy of the concept of efficiency return.
At the same time, it can also be seen that the simple and rough reduction of ranks, as well as the policy of increasing the annual "small range of cash adjustments for particularly outstanding employees", reflect the high homogenization of posts.
"Meituan has a large number of basic employees, and this compression also shows from the side that the level of homogenization of these employees is high and the replaceability is also very high." For employees whose ability and effectiveness contributions do not match, Meituan is no longer willing to pay more costs. He said that flattening is more conducive to command and rapid operation of the team, which can greatly reduce communication costs and improve execution efficiency.
In the expert's view, large companies generally go through two stages of development: the first is the capacity reserve stage, represented by large companies such as Meituan and Pinduoduo. Although they are very large, their own ability reserves are still relatively limited; the second stage is the maturity of capabilities, represented by Ali, Tencent, Huawei, etc. The ability reserves of these companies are already relatively sufficient, and their main task is to modularize and subdivide the work, so that the comprehensive ability requirements of personnel are not so high, and they only need to do a good job of screws step by step.
In contrast, Ali's "271 Policy" and "361 Policy" are actually the "compound interest model" that encourages the middle layer to strive for progress by eliminating 10% of the deterrent effect during the company's rapid expansion period.
Ant Financial's listing was suspended, Ali was fined hugely, and under various external shocks, this period may be the best time for the system to correct deviations.
When it comes to the institutional adjustment of large factories and the enlightenment for small and medium-sized enterprises, part-time cat human resources experts said that for small and medium-sized enterprises, the pursuit of efficiency and quality is. Therefore, agile organization is the focus of the pursuit in the early stage of enterprise development, flat organization, rapid personnel iteration and accumulation, maintaining the passion and vitality of the enterprise, is an important foundation for the survival of the enterprise;
For enterprises in a stable period, the quality requirements are more important than efficiency, at this time the need for stable development and perfect control process, the need to rely on the standardization of the process for quality management, although still the pursuit of flat organization, but the stability of personnel is required to maintain.