Tao Yiting, the public relations manager of Haidilao, was quite surprised when interviewed by the reporter of China Business News. "This is just a case. I wonder if the media will pay so much attention. However, we do not shy away from all kinds of problems that Haidilao will encounter in the development process. After all, Haidilao currently has more than 20,000 employees, which is more difficult to control than the previous thousands. "
Nowadays, with the increasing fame and scale of Haidilao, many things have exceeded the expectations of Haidilao. It is undeniable that the "extortion incident" in Haidilao is a historical necessity. With the accelerated expansion of Haidilao, it is difficult for the management to keep up with the pace of development, which may be the dilemma faced by Zhang Yong, the founder of Haidilao.
The grievances of employees were not built in a day.
"We don't want to disclose too much about employees being blackmailed, and we have handed it over to the police." Tao Yiting responded to the reporter on the extortion incident, saying that the whole thing was as reported by the media before. The resigned Haidilao employees were not rewarded after their suggestions were adopted by the company, so they used their personnel information to stage a blackmail case.
In fact, any enterprise may have labor disputes caused by employee dissatisfaction. Especially for Haidilao, which currently has 109 stores in 29 cities across the country, two stores in Singapore, one in Los Angeles and one in Seoul, South Korea, it is no accident that labor disputes occurred at the end of the year.
Pei Chenghui, the brand director of Golden Million who once worked in Haidilao, told reporters that when he worked in Haidilao, employees complained about the company's various problems, not the employees themselves. In his view, Haidilao is a typical labor-intensive enterprise with more than 20,000 employees. Because of loopholes in process and management, it is inevitable that employees will not be satisfied and respected. "The extortion incident in Haidilao was only caused by the accelerated spread of news in the new media era. Although there have been such incidents before, they have not attracted attention. "
Over the years, Haidilao has attached great importance to the management, training and selection of employees. One of the most important criteria for Zhang Yong to choose a new person is that he was born in the countryside, had a low education (some even illiterate), was willing to endure hardships, and urgently demanded to change the status quo.
"Perhaps it is because the quality of employees is uneven, and most employees come from the bottom of society. The material and spiritual requirements are very high, and the management is quite difficult, especially Haidilao, which is labor-intensive. The fatigue of grassroots employees can be imagined, and dissatisfaction is inevitable. " Li Zhiqi, a marketing expert, thinks.
In Li Zhiqi's view, the most fundamental extortion incident is related to the promotion mechanism of Haidilao. Employees can't get a good promotion space, so they will take extreme measures. In this regard, Tao Yiting does not deny that there are such problems inside Haidilao.
Haidilao employees are divided into six grades: excellent and model worker. According to the performance appraisal method, employees will participate in the promotion assessment once every six months, and if they pass the assessment, they will also give bonuses to the promoted teachers. In Pei's view, this is actually a simple assessment and promotion mechanism. Excellent service personnel can only be promoted to the highest level store manager. For employees in Haidilao, a store 150~200, employees who can be promoted are hard-working and diligent, so there will be opportunities.
In fact, the sense of belonging that Haidilao strives to create has become an obstacle on its way forward, because it will bear a heavy burden, and the slightest sign of employee resignation or structural adjustment will make people panic.
High-speed expansion encounters talent bottleneck
Relying on strong service ability, Haidilao has taken the first place in the national hot pot. According to an insider of Haidilao, there are many new stores in Haidilao now, and the management of personnel is indeed more difficult than before.
"It is not easy to recruit employees in the catering industry. There are many stores and it is difficult to recruit people. " Tao Yiting said frankly that when the company is big, it can't be the management style of thousands of people. After any enterprise becomes bigger, there will be problems in management. When it encounters a problem, Haidilao will not avoid it. According to its disclosure, Haidilao has complaint channels, and employees are dissatisfied with the company, and the relevant person in charge will communicate directly with employees.
In 20 14, Haidilao opened 17 stores in one breath. In addition to the rapid expansion, the hidden dangers behind it have also emerged. A retired employee of Haidilao told reporters that the speed of opening stores in the past was controlled at 5-8 every year, and now it is almost three times as fast as before. In the industry's view, in the catering industry that is not suitable for large-scale expansion, Haidilao's large-scale expansion of Zhang Zhilu in Zhang Zhilu will inevitably bring various drawbacks.
"The expansion of the store is too fast. In addition to higher capital requirements for hardware, it is the replication of talents. " Feng Enyuan, vice president of China Cuisine Association, said, for example, to open 17 stores a year, it is necessary to train 17 qualified store managers, and the store managers have to be independent, which is also a challenge to the employee selection and training mechanism.
Tao Yiting admits that it is also difficult to recruit, especially after each year. As for how to solve the problem of talent shortage in Haidilao, Tao Yiting has not disclosed it yet. In fact, in the development of Haidilao, the lack of personnel, especially outstanding cadres, has always been one of the obstacles to its expansion.
The positioning of stores needs to start with the training of purchasing and service personnel. Li Zhiqi believes that catering enterprises should not open stores too quickly, which will lead to the imperfection of their own knowledge system and training mechanism, which will lead to the decline of service and reputation.
In fact, for a heavy asset enterprise like Haidilao, the store rent will definitely be higher and higher, and the investment will be bigger and bigger. When a store invests several million yuan, its cash flow pressure will naturally increase, especially during the period of opening the store too fast.
With the current brand influence, Haidilao must slow down the expansion speed, exchange time for space, and strive for more time to improve internal personnel training and refined operation, which takes time to precipitate. "Food safety in the catering industry is also a sword hanging over the head, and the requirements for its procurement and quality control are getting higher and higher." Li Zhi said that Haidilao needs to slow down and solve some practical problems.
Strong cultures are now in conflict.
"This is the most culturally strong enterprise I have ever seen, and there is no one. Employees will be systematically trained before signing the contract, and employees are not allowed to surf the Internet or play cards. Just like family members, they are afraid that their children will go astray. Therefore, the family culture created by Haidilao is the most cohesive for employees with low education level, which other enterprises can't learn. " Yan said.
However, it is undeniable that there is a direct conflict between Haidilao and the individualized needs of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s. A retired employee of Haidilao revealed that Haidilao employees are very tired every day. Because of the large passenger flow, Haidilao employees trot almost every day. Most employees give up because they think the three-month probation period is too labor-intensive.
According to Pei, many employees working in Haidilao come from one family, and there has even been a story of a family of nine working in Haidilao. This may be the main reason for the nepotism between new employees and former management reported by the media, which leads to internal intrigue and cliques.
Pei revealed that Haidilao has always practiced mentoring, but Haidilao does not have much control, mainly relying on its family culture. But at present, Haidilao has tens of thousands of employees, so it is impossible to take care of every employee.
Li Zhi said that family culture and institutional management are two sides of a silver coin, which need both rigid constraints and emotional communication, and management must balance the two. In fact, when the number of stores is small, such problems will not be encountered, but it is impossible for hundreds of stores to make the company's top management pay attention to the various needs of employees, which is a concentrated problem in the development of labor-intensive enterprises.
However, Tao Yiting told reporters that Haidilao did not care much about the public's views on it. "We just try our best to do our own thing and satisfy consumers." All along, Haidilao has been trying to make itself look like a normal company. Many people don't understand Haidilao because it doesn't play cards according to common sense, which is also to maintain their ability of continuous innovation.
When an enterprise has rules and regulations, it will hinder innovation, which is perhaps Zhang Yong's biggest anxiety at present, seeking a balance between management system and innovation. Earlier, Zhang Yong made it clear to the outside world that "the management innovation of Haidilao is very simple, because our employees have low academic qualifications, so we just need to treat them as people". But now Zhang Yong runs counter to its claimed innovation.
"The control process is killing the creativity of Haidilao." In the view of a person who once worked in Haidilao, the rapid development of enterprises will encounter some bottlenecks. Zhang Yong's anxiety is still the anxiety of large enterprises, that is, enterprises must become more controllable, such as supply chain links, and uncontrollable security problems will encounter catastrophe.
Obviously, the current sea fishing is not what Zhang Yong had in mind. If these problems can't be solved, it will be different.