It's an ordinary weekday.
At 8:10 a.m., a morning meeting was underway in a certain department of Baoneng Automobile. After employees enter the door to check in, rows stand upright in front of the TV. On the brand-new TV set, there is a Baoneng version of "News Network", which is a quick overview of the news events that Baoneng employees must watch every morning.
After watching, a person started, and everyone sang the "Si Song" of Baoneng Group. Of course, there will also be employees who only open their mouths and do not sing, and after being caught by the director next to them, they will be fined 200 yuan. After singing, the leader took the lead in shouting the slogan: "Faith, faith, confidence, credibility!" "Develop the industry and repay the society!" After shouting the slogan, everyone present raised their hands and shot three times in a row, and everyone shouted out four words in unison - "I love Baoneng!" ”
At this point, the minute hand had just passed 8:30, and it was time to officially go to work. The employees walked upstairs and started their day's work. As for those employees who came to the company only after "official working hours", they could only be forced to "donate" 100 yuan because they could not sign their names at the morning meeting.
With the morning light, Baoneng Automobile began a new day of operation. This real estate car-making group holding two car brands and five car-making bases is regarded as a model of "fast-paced car-making" in the industry. However, unlike before, Baoneng Automobile employees frequently call rights protection phones after work, "uninvited guests" often appear around the office building, and the area around the car-making base has also strengthened their vigilance...
All these changes will start from February 2020.
■ From disbursement to layoffs
Just after the Spring Festival in 2020, Li Qiang, who has been in charge for many years, opened the "Salary Inquiry" page as usual. But to his surprise, the social security that should have been paid on time this month was not remitted to his social security account.
Li Qiang asked HR, and the other party said that in the next month, the company will definitely make up for everyone, please rest assured. Li Qiang's hanging heart was slightly lowered, "Such a big company, can it still owe me social security?" ”
The time comes to 2021. Baoneng Automobile not only did not pay back the social security of employees, but even the provident fund was cut off. Li Qiang told Autohome that as of April 2021, Baoneng Automobile had cut off his social security for 14 months and the housing provident fund for 4 months.
This news was confirmed by Wu Ting, who is also an employee of Baoneng Automobile. Wu Ting described that since February 2020, most employees of Baoneng Automobile have experienced a "social security cut-off incident", even if a lot of social security funds are deducted from the company's wages.
"Social Security Benefits Are Deducted By a Lot of Cents"
In the world of "workers", the cut-off payment of social security and provident fund is a very serious matter. Of course, the employees of Baoneng Automobile have not thought of a way. Some people choose to call the labor security telephone "12333" to report, this part of the employees in a very short period of time to get social security supplementary payment, but most people will choose to leave Baoneng after the social security supplementary payment.
"An employee's medicare account shows that it has not been paid medical insurance"
Originally, this "social security payment incident" was just an undercurrent under the surface of the water, and most people would choose to go to work from nine to five and work normally. However, the "year-end award" around the New Year of 2021 completely set off a "tsunami of public opinion" inside Baoneng Automobile.
In the New Year of 2021, the employees of Baoneng Automobile did not wait for the "14 and 15 salaries" already marked on the contract as they wished, but received a special "year-end bonus" - sausage, tangerine peel, soy sauce, water cup. These gifts are wrapped in exaggerated large boxes, symbolizing the harvest of Baoneng Automobile employees for a year.
「Baoneng Year-end Award」
On various social platforms, everyone's dissatisfaction with the year-end award has gradually fermented, evolving into a public opinion crisis condemning Baoneng Automobile. A widely circulated information shows that during the 315 party, the public relations department of Baoneng Automobile was like a great enemy, and all employees were online 24 hours a day to cope with public opinion, and the data named "social security, provident fund" and other issues.
『Baoneng Internal Plan』
The only thing that keeps the clouds light and breezy is Baoneng's corporate culture team. When the "salary begging tide" intensified, they did not panic with an internal push - "I know you are anxious, so I sent you a financial lesson." ”
「Baoneng Pushes Wealth Management Class to Employees』
Some internal employees revealed to Autohome that from July 2021, Baoneng Automobile will reduce the proportion of employees' provident fund contributions and social security base to the local minimum standard. However, reality proves that after cutting off the payment of social security provident fund, layoffs have also followed.
After waiting for 14 months, Li Qiang could not wait for the supplementary payment of the provident fund social security, but waited for the HR conversation. Baoneng Automobile HR euphemistically said that the company wants to terminate the labor relationship with Li Qiang. At Baoneng Automobile, a layoff storm is brewing secretly.
There are many people who are reluctant to be laid off by Baoneng Automobile, but Baoneng Automobile's HR has various ways to get employees to leave the company. Li Qiang revealed that these methods include, but are not limited to, "probationary employees do not pass the probation", "formulate a set of random evaluation of performance appraisal results to force people to go", "reduce the treatment and carry out invisible layoffs" and so on.
「Baoneng clarifies "layoffs""
Although Baoneng Automobile responded to the outside world in March that "layoffs are rumors" and the company is "optimizing" the organizational structure, the company's undignified "large-scale optimization" has become an open secret. Some people are panicking when layoffs will come to them, and some people are saying that "Xi'an Research Institute will optimize 40% of employees." Of course, more people who have been "optimized" are doing the same thing - waiting for the delayed "optimization compensation".
Before the press release, Wu Ting told Autohome that things were gradually getting better. Just in April, Baoneng Automobile paid back the 2020 social security for her, although the 2021 social security is still in arrears, but she has felt satisfied. "It's like someone hitting you with a whip all the time, and suddenly one day you don't hit it, and you're going to be happy."
■ Baoneng car is short of money?
"It's never happened before."
In the exchange, Wu Ting recalled that she had just come to Baoneng Automobile in 2018, when it was the most "beautiful" time of Baoneng Automobile, "The condition of Baoneng Automobile in 2018 was not bad, and Baoneng Headquarters was also very willing to invest. According to public information, in 2017, Baoneng spent 6.63 billion yuan to acquire 51% of the equity of Qoros Automobile, and then increased its holding to 63%; in 2019 and 2020, it spent a total of 3.23 billion yuan to obtain 100% of the equity of Changan PSA.
Although the company has always declared that "funds are abundant", Wu Ting can clearly feel that the headquarters' investment in the automobile sector is declining. Wu Ting said that not paying provident fund and social security for employees is only part of the reduction of expenditure. "Internally, Baoneng Auto has been saving money at all levels."
The sales of a direct-operated store felt the company's efforts to reduce expenditure. "The original promised 5% sales commission, said no, the commission of the sales consultant is changing every month, can be less, can not be sent without sending." Some people put up 30,000 to do the auto show, and the reimbursement was directly rejected, saying that it did not meet the KPI. ”
『Qoros Dealership』
Baoneng Automobile has taken measures to reduce costs internally, and externally it is in arrears with suppliers. Wu Ting said, "Before doing a project did not give the supplier a payment, and then the supplier came to make trouble to give money, Shanghai, Shenzhen there are." ”
An internal document of Baoneng Automobile entitled "Application for Settlement of Marketing Expenses for Marketing Promotion through New Car Deduction Form" shows that there are arrears of market-related fees such as supplier material production and advertising placement in various places. The document applies for the payment of the fee "in the form of a new car credit", in other words, the supplier cannot get the money, only the car. "The current situation is that if you don't have any money, you can take the car at will." Wu Ting said.
『Baoneng Automobile Internal Documents』
But what is slightly strange is that in the context of open source and cost reduction, some of baoneng automobile's expenditures will be confusing. In terms of research and development, some employees revealed that Baoneng Automobile was particularly generous when signing contracts with suppliers. He mentioned that Baoneng has a car that wants to modify the component bracket of non-critical parts, and the supplier's opening is a fee of more than 1 million yuan, and the two sides have signed a contract smoothly.
Wu Ting said that this kind of thing is commonplace in Baoneng Automobile. "Although Baoneng can reduce expenditure in open source, as long as the project complies with the rules and regulations, no matter how outrageous the price can be signed, it will not be very painful to give money to the supplier anyway."
At the same time, Baoneng Automobile also published advertisements in some core media.
"Advertisements published by core media in a big way"
Wu Ting revealed that what Baoneng Automobile has to do at the moment is to sprint for the IPO with all its strength in order to survive. Compared with Baoneng Automobile, Evergrande Automobile, which was listed earlier, is accompanied by the hot speculation of new energy stocks, and its market value has long been rising to nearly 600 billion.
When Qoros was acquired in 2017, Yao Zhenhua, chairman of Baoneng Group, announced that he would invest 10 billion yuan in Qoros auto every year for five consecutive years for new product research and development. The reality is that in the past 4 years, in addition to Qoros 7, the Qoros brand has not come up with other products for sale. Baoneng Automobile is tightly funded, and it is particularly important to rely on the launch of new models to achieve "self-hematopoiesis".
Data show that in 2018, Qoros sold 63,200 vehicles for the whole year. In 2019, Qoros' annual sales fell to 22,900 units. In 2020, Qoros automobiles sold a total of 12,100 units, and sales continued to decline. Moreover, most of the models included in sales are Baoneng's "self-produced and self-sold". According to the financial report data, as of 2018, Qoros Automobile's cumulative loss exceeded 12 billion yuan.
According to the original agreement of Baoneng's acquisition of Qoros, Baoneng Group connected its shared car rental business "Linkage Cloud" with the sales of Qoros Automobile, and the "Linkage Cloud" needed to complete the procurement from Qoros Automobile. An employee of the linkage cloud said, "The car is all piled up in the linkage cloud, and it really can't be digested." ”
『Linkage Cloud Vehicle』
However, while sales are declining, Baoneng Automobile has planned a huge production capacity. Automobile projects have been planned in Xi'an, Guangzhou, Kunming, Hangzhou and Wuhan, with a total investment of about 130 billion yuan and a planned total production capacity of 2 million vehicles. If you add projects in Changshu, Kunshan, Guiyang and other places, its total planned production capacity will reach 3 million vehicles.
What does "3 million vehicles" mean? According to 2020 data, FAW-Volkswagen, the largest automobile company in China, sold 2.16 million vehicles for the whole year.
At the same time, the construction of Baoneng Automobile Factory is not smooth. Taking Baoneng Automobile's Guangzhou production base as an example, the plant that was laid at the end of 2017 has been under construction for more than three years, but it has not yet been completed. In the automotive industry, the construction cycle of production plants of the same size is generally about 2 years.
■ What happens inside?
Li Qiang witnessed the expansion of the entire Baoneng Automobile from more than 300 people to more than 3,000 people in 1 and a half years, and an unprecedented "car-making drama" was staged in this real estate company. According to Li Qiang's observation, many teams of Baoneng Automobile are joined by other OEMs and are doing the original work.
This arrangement has certain advantages, the team can become familiar with the business as soon as possible, and speed up the progress of car construction. It is undeniable that in the process of expansion of Baoneng Automobile, a higher salary package in the industry has been given, which has flowed into many first-class engineers, who belong to the "top level" in the industry. Li Qiang said that before that, there was also a "big god" of the founding team of Xiaopeng Automobile who came to Baoneng Automobile.
However, "whether you can recruit good engineers" and "can you make good use of excellent talents" are two completely different topics.
"There are many engineers who work hard every day until midnight, but from the perspective of the project progress, because of the continuous resistance within the group, the project is seriously aborted." There are insider employees who revealed to Autohome.
「Baoneng Automobile New Car Unveiled』
The previous project experienced by this employee was originally smooth, but only because the director of the project left, all the projects under the supervision were stopped, and the personnel could only be classified into other projects. "Everybody feels a pity, that project is really good." The employee said. Similarly, in Li Qiang's department, a project has produced several test cars, but in the end it is inevitable to get off the horse.
In addition to the frequent aborts of the project, the cumbersome approval process within Baoneng Automobile also affects the operation of the company. An employee of Baoneng Automobile's direct sales store told Autohome that if you want to launch a marketing campaign, the process approval is very cumbersome, from submission to approval is about 1 month, and excellent OEMs can be done within 7 days. "Marketing is supposed to be done on a time-sensitive basis, and it needs to be adaptable and make decisions immediately."
In the exchange, many employees had the impression of "low efficiency" of Baoneng Automobile. It takes 4 months for fresh graduates to get a tripartite certificate, and even if they recruit employees who enter Baoneng Automobile, they still need to wait 3 months after the interview to get an offer; for a long time, only paper documents inside Baoneng can be approved.
Li Qiang said that if there is a "person who knows how to build a car" to stand up and take charge of the overall situation, things will be much easier to handle. "But at present, there is no such person, or such a person's authority is not high enough, and each department can only fight for itself."
The direct impact of inefficiency is the obstruction of the development schedule of the model. "The current situation is that the stalls are very large, and there are still two cars around the GX16 that are being developed synchronously, but the progress is slow." Li Qiang told Autohome, "The GX16 was originally planned to be mass-produced in November this year, but it is difficult to achieve it as scheduled according to the current research and development progress. ”
Another internal employee said that it was originally planned that Baoneng Automobile would hold a brand conference in March this year to release the high-end brand "Baoneng Automobile" and logo. At present, the logo has been determined, and the material is in production, but the conference has been postponed. The internal employee said the extension may be due to "payment problems."
"Recently exposed Baoneng Automobile GX16 test vehicle"
The social security payment crisis has not yet passed, and the wheels of Baoneng Automobile are still moving forward in the mud. An employee and Autohome said, "At Baoneng Automobile, you have to deal with a lot of chores outside of work, and it is really difficult to do research with peace of mind. ”
A graduate management trainee of the research institute needs to go to the offline direct store for several months to sell after joining; each department has a car sales indicator, and many departments that cannot sell cars can only work together with 4S stores to cheat; some departments even send pennants to themselves in order to look at the leader's admiration...
At a symposium of Baoneng Group in 2020, Yao Zhenhua said that Baoneng will vigorously cultivate outstanding young talents and provide resources to give them all-round help and support for their growth and success. The reality is that outstanding young people in the audience are forced to spend half a day training on one thing. That is, to stand up from the stool and salute Boss Yao.
"In short, it's not like a car company's style." Li Qiang said.
In the end, Wu Ting, who chose to stick to Baoneng, described her days like this: "Brush Taobao, take care of the leaders, a day will pass." In the first morning after leaving Baoneng to join the new company, Li Qiang took a deep breath of air. He said it was the taste of freedom. (Text/Autohome Cheng Gong; the characters in the text are pseudonyms)