Tao Yiting, public relations manager of Haidilao, appeared surprised in an interview with China Business News, "This is just an individual case, and I don't know that the media will pay so much attention to it. But we don't avoid the fact that Haidilao will encounter all kinds of problems in the process of development, after all, the current Haidilao staff has more than 20,000 people, compared with the previous scale of a few thousand people more difficult to control."
Nowadays, as Haidilao's reputation is getting louder and louder, the scale is getting bigger and bigger, a lot of things have gone beyond Haidilao's anticipation. Undeniably, Haidilao "extortion incident" is the inevitable history. With the accelerated expansion of Haidilao, management is difficult to keep up with the pace of development, which may be the founder of Haidilao Zhang Yong is currently facing the dilemma.
Employee grudges are not a day's cold
"On the matter of staff extortion, we do not want to disclose too much, has been handed over to the police to deal with." Tao Yiting responded to reporters on the extortion incident, said the whole thing as previously reported in the media, the departure of the Haidilao employees because of their own suggestions were adopted by the company, and did not get rewarded, so the use of the hands of the personnel information staged an extortion case.
In fact, any company may have problems with labor disputes due to various grievances of its employees. Especially for the current spread across the country 29 cities **** there are 109 stores, and there are 2 in Singapore, the United States, Los Angeles, South Korea, Seoul, one store each of the Haidilao, in the year-end labor disputes is not unexpected.
Jinmillion brand director Pei Chenghui, who once served in Haidilao, told reporters that when he served in Haidilao, there are employees complained about a variety of corporate issues, and not individual employees. In his view, Haidilao is a typical labor-intensive enterprises, currently has more than 20,000 employees. It is inevitable that the loopholes in the process and management cause employees not to be satisfied and respected. "This time, Haidilao was exposed to extortion is only due to the new media era news spread faster due to the previous such incidents but did not cause concern."
Over the years, Haidilao has paid extreme attention to the management, training and selection of employees. Zhang Yong selection of newcomers to the standard of the most important one is the origin of rural areas, education is not high (some are even illiterate), willing to suffer, urgent need to change the status quo.
"Perhaps due to the uneven quality of practitioners, and most employees from the bottom of society, the material and spiritual requirements are relatively high, resulting in considerable management difficulties, especially in the labor-intensive Haidilao, grass-roots employees can be imagined, the heart of the dissatisfaction is inevitable." Marketing expert Li Zhiqi believes.
In Li Zhiqi's opinion, the extortion incident is still the most fundamental with the promotion mechanism of Haidilao, employees can not get good promotion space, so they will use extreme ways. In this regard, Tao Yiting also does not deny that there is such a problem within Haidilao.
Haidilao's employees are divided into six levels, excellent, standard bearer, model worker, etc., according to the performance appraisal, half a year employees to participate in a promotion assessment, such as through the assessment of the employees will also be given to the promotion of the master issued a bonus. In Pei Chenghui's view, in fact, this is a more simple assessment and promotion mechanism. Excellent service employees can only rise to the highest store manager, for a store with 150 ~ 200 employees in the sea, can be promoted up the staff are working very hard and hard to have the opportunity.
In fact, Haidilao efforts to shape the sense of belonging to the staff has become an obstacle on its way forward, because it will contribute to its heavy baggage, staff leaving or structural adjustments and so on a little bit of wind blowing to make the people on edge.
High-speed expansion suffered a talent bottleneck
Relying on strong service capabilities, Haidilao sat on the position of China's first hot pot. According to an insider of Haidilao, now Haidilao opened many new stores, the management of personnel is really more difficult than before.
"Recruitment of employees in the catering industry is not easy to begin with, and it's also difficult to recruit people when there are more stores opened." Tao Yiting frankly admitted that the company is big, it is impossible to be the same way of management as thousands of people before, any business will exist after the big business management problems, encounter problems, Haidilao will not avoid. According to its disclosure, Haidilao internal complaint channels, employees have dissatisfaction with the company, the relevant person in charge will communicate directly with the employees.
In 2014, Haidilao opened 17 stores in one breath, in addition to the momentum of rapid expansion, the hidden dangers behind it has emerged. A Haidilao left the staff told reporters, before the annual opening rate control in 5 ~ 8 stores, now almost three times as much as before. In the industry's view, in the catering industry is not suitable for large-scale expansion, Haidilao embarked on a large-scale expansion of the road, will inevitably lead to a variety of shortcomings.
"The expansion of stores too fast, in addition to the hardware of the capital requirements are higher, is the replication of talent." Feng Enyuan, vice president of the China Cuisine Association, said, for example, to open 17 stores a year, you have to train 17 qualified store manager, and the store manager also has to be unique, the staff selection and training mechanism is also a challenge.
Tao Yiting admitted that the same recruitment difficulties, especially after the annual time period. For how to solve the problem of lack of talent, Tao Yiting did not disclose. In fact, in the process of the development of Haidilao, the lack of personnel, especially the lack of excellent cadres, has always been one of the obstacles to limit the speed of its expansion.
A store's positions from purchasing, service personnel, etc. need to cultivate the process. Li Zhiqi believes that catering companies should not open stores too fast, too fast will lead to their own knowledge system, training mechanism is not sound, which leads to a decline in service and reputation.
In fact, Haidilao such a heavy asset enterprise, store rent is certainly getting higher and higher, the investment will also be more and more large, a store's investment of several million dollars, the pressure on its cash flow will naturally increase, especially in the opening of the store too quickly in the time period.
Haidilao to the current brand influence must slow down the expansion speed, to time for space, for more time to improve internal personnel training and refinement of the operation work, which need to rely on time precipitation. "Food safety in the catering industry is also a sharp sword hanging over its head, with increasingly high requirements for its procurement and quality control." Li Zhiqi said it is more important for Haidilao to slow down to solve some practical problems.
Tough culture now in conflict
"This is the company with the toughest culture I've ever seen, bar none. Employees will be systematic training before signing the contract, do not allow employees to surf the Internet, playing cards, just like family members are afraid of children on the wrong path. Therefore, Haidilao to create a family culture is the most cohesive for employees who are not highly educated, which is also other companies can not learn." Pei Chenghui said.
But it is undeniable that Haidilao has a direct conflict with the personalized needs of young people after 80 and 90 now. A Haidilao left the staff revealed, Haidilao staff every day is very tired, because of heavy traffic, Haidilao staff almost every day to trot to work, the general staff in the probationary period of three months most of the labor intensity because of the feeling is too big and give up.
According to Pei Chenghui, many employees working in Haidilao come from one family, and there have even been stories of a family of nine people working in Haidilao. This is perhaps the main reason for previous media reports of nepotism between new employees and previous management, leading to internal hooks and gangs within the company.
Pei Chenghui revealed, Haidilao has been the implementation of the master-apprentice system of training, and Haidilao control system is not much, mainly rely on its creation of family culture control. But now Haidilao has tens of thousands of employees, it is impossible to take care of every employee.
Li Zhiqi said, family culture and system management is the two sides of the silver coin, both rigid constraints, but also emotional communication, the management must be balanced between the two. In fact, the number of stores is small will not encounter such a problem, but hundreds of stores to allow the company's top management to pay attention to the various needs of the staff is unlikely, which is labor-intensive business development process is concentrated in the problem.
But Tao Yiting told reporters that Haidilao doesn't care much about what the public says about it. "We just try to do our best to make consumers happy." And all along, Haidilao is also trying to make itself not like a normal company, many people can't read Haidilao is because of its not according to the common sense, which is also in order to keep itself to maintain the ability to continue to innovate.
And when a company has rules and regulations, it will hinder innovation, which may be Zhang Yong's biggest anxiety at present, seeking a balance between the management system and innovation. Previously, Zhang Yong had explicitly said to the public, "Haidilao management innovation is very simple, because our employees are not educated, as long as they treat them as human beings on the line". But now Zhang Yong is the opposite of its claimed innovation.
"The control process is killing Haidilao's creativity." In the view of a person who has served in the Haidilao, the enterprise will encounter some bottlenecks if it develops too fast. Zhang Yong's anxiety or the anxiety of large enterprises, is the need to make the enterprise more controllable, such as the supply chain link, security issues are not controllable will encounter a big disaster.
Obviously, the current Haidilao is not the Haidilao in Zhang Yong's mind, and more and more huge Haidilao if you can not solve these problems, will no longer be as in the past.