Last week, the news that LinkedIn (LinkedIn) withdrew from China surprised many HR friends around them, especially HR in the foreign trade industry.
According to the official announcement issued by the LinkedIn, due to operational challenges, it was decided to shut down the LinkedIn China service later this year and launch an alternative, Injobs, which no longer covers the publishing and interactive functions of user-generated content.
That is to say, the positioning of the new product is no longer a workplace social platform, which does not support functions such as social networking and sharing, but as a pure recruitment platform, focusing on recruitment and job search services.
Why did LinkedIn suddenly make such a decision? What does this teach HR?
7 year itch
LinkedIn the development context in China
As a global workplace social platform, as of July 2021, LinkedIn has more than 774 million global members, covering more than 200 countries and regions.
Among them, the total number of Chinese members exceeded 54 million.
In 2014, LinkedIn officially entered China, and for the Chinese market, specially developed a workplace social software "Red Rabbit", the benchmark competitor is the domestic workplace social platform "Pulse".
Unfortunately, even in order to cater to domestic users, Red Rabbit tried to make some localization changes, but in the end it was still inferior to the pulse, and the product went offline in 2019.
Immediately LinkedIn announced the launch of a strategic upgrade in China, transforming from a "connector for global workplace contacts" to a "one-stop career development platform" to provide Chinese professionals with solutions to deal with the pain points of different career development stages.
On the newly upgraded LinkedIn App, the "Careers" section has undergone significant changes, adding modules such as "Career Guide", "Salary Insight", "Workplace Q&A", "Workplace Compulsory Courses" and so on.
There are even many friends who have become workplace big Vs because they share workplace and HR-related knowledge LinkedIn.
Foreign companies have suffered frequent setbacks in China
What do you mean by HR?
Although the reasons for LinkedIn shutting down Chinese services are different, it is actually a very common thing for foreign companies to be frustrated in China, as google and Baidu, ebay and Taobao, MSN and QQ, and uber and Didi in previous years.
In addition to Internet companies, it is also difficult for foreign companies to compete with domestic enterprises offline.
The most obvious example is that in Wuhan, Carrefour and Walmart have already shown decline in competition with local stores such as Hema Fresh and Wushang Vendors.
The reason is that, on the one hand, Chinese companies are more aware of the culture, thinking and habits of domestic users.
Taking Pulse as an example, it is undoubtedly more humane and user-oriented than LinkedIn in details such as content distribution, anonymous communication, group chat services, real-name authentication, and mobile first.
Anonymous communication effectively meets the communication needs of generally stressed and high-intensity professionals, which is also a great tool to enhance the activity of pulse users.
On the other hand, these foreign companies are usually reluctant to delegate power to domestic managers, and need to report to the headquarters for decision-making in case of trouble, which often misses some development opportunities in the rapidly changing Internet era.
The same is true of the workplace.
As the modern workplace moves in a more flexible and diversified direction, this has also prompted HR to rethink the collaborative relationship between enterprises and employees, and explore new employment methods and employee management models.
If HR does not actively think about the needs of employees in the new era (disregarding user experience) and explore employee management models that are in line with the development of enterprises (not keeping pace with the times), then development will eventually be limited.
New Era HR
What is really needed?
The rapid development of the Internet era has placed increasingly high requirements for corporate strategic renewal. As business continues to change, modern enterprises have higher and higher requirements for HR, and the challenges we face have also increased.
For example, HR is hard to recruit, but the recruitment standards have suddenly changed, and efficient recruitment is always delayed by inefficient collaboration.
At present, the turnover rate of employees in the first half of the year has exceeded 30%, and the new generation Z employees who pay more attention to the value and experience of work will have a higher turnover rate?
There are more and more ways to manage performance, which one should KPIs and OKRs be used?
How many systems does an HR department need to be in order to have a recruitment system, how many systems does an HR department need to use?