Foxconn Apocalypse

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24th in the 2004 Best Employers of Chinese College Students;

2005 Best Employers for Chinese College Students 40th in the list;

30th in the 2006 Best Employers of Chinese College Students;

31st in the 2007 Best Employers for Chinese College Students;

2008 Top Ten Employers in China's Manufacturing Industry;

2009 Top Ten Employers in Durable Consumer Goods Industry.

By 2010, this report card seems to have been marked for eternity, replaced by another series of numbers: 9 jumps, 10 jumps... 13 jumps.

At this point, you must understand that the owner of this transcript is Foxconn.

Foxconn is not the only domestic company that has fallen from the best employer to the cloud. In 2006, Baidu's painstakingly managed best employer image fell to the ground due to "lightning layoffs". But the way Foxconn fell is particularly brutal and impressive by comparison. Some people pointed the finger at Foxconn's strict management. There are three charges: 1. The working hours are too long; 2. The security guard beats people; 3. The team leader has a bad attitude. However, Foxconn's so-called militarized management did not begin today. Why was it the best employer at that time, but now it has become a "sweatshop"?

Interactive topic: Why go to Foxconn if you don't have a good reputation?

This publication has joined hands with the human resource management consulting firm Hay Group to send an invitation to Foxconn, trying to find the crux of the problem through the power of experts. Although no reply has been received, despite the rhetoric of "best employer" and "sweatshop", we can still find vague logical connections between various scattered phenomena through calm observation and in-depth analysis.

Contradictory Made in China

According to research by financial writer Wu Xiaobo, "Made in China" became a buzzword after 2001. The large number of orders brought by China's entry into the WTO has made China's manufacturing industry prosperous for a while. Farmers have flocked to the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. The production lines that run day and night have an astonishing number of products every day. With the support of low labor costs, " "Made in China" is sold all over the world.

It was the best time for China's manufacturing harvest. It seems that if you dig a small hole in the wilderness, spring water will flow out, and any leaf can take root and sprout. Foreign trade factories of all sizes make a lot of money Full. During these years, Foxconn expanded indefinitely at an annual rate of 30%.

But by 2008, the world had changed in an instant. The financial crisis has sharply reduced foreign demand, the renminbi has begun to climb upwards, and the promulgation of the new labor law has increased labor costs for companies... The golden age of Chinese manufacturing is gone forever. Also starting in 2008, Foxconn suffered five consecutive years of performance decline. After a short-lived small increase in its net profit in 2011, it set a new record in 2012 with a loss of $320 million.

In the eyes of outsiders, Foxconn is somewhat mysterious. The company has strict access control, not only outsiders are not allowed to enter, but employees must be searched when entering and leaving. The reckless "lurking" of reporters, the speculations of passersby, and the inconsistent assessments given by various investigation agencies have made it a terrifying place in various legends.

But that doesn't stop young people from lining up to enter Foxconn. In Shenzhen, the Foxconn recruitment site on Longhua Donghuan 2nd Road has a long queue every year after the Spring Festival. Tens of thousands of young people gather here like migratory birds from all over the country, making it a spectacle in Shenzhen. They also openly exchanged their "experiences from entering the factory" on the Internet, because many people did not meet the educational standards, and even brought up the surrounding "dens" for making fake certificates. At the beginning of this year, Foxconn suspended recruitment due to labor contraction, but there are still many people lingering at the entrance of the recruitment site, hoping to try their luck.

Foxconn is such a contradictory existence. As a global OEM aircraft carrier, it also has the mentality of making contradictions and entanglements in China.

The infamy of "sweatshop" in recent years has made Gou Terry, the leader of Foxconn, inexplicably aggrieved. From an objective and fair perspective, the overall welfare of Foxconn employees is actually higher than that of ordinary manufacturing enterprises in the Pearl River Delta. Wang Liang, an economist who has studied Shenzhen's manufacturing industry for a long time, once pointed out, "Foxconn pays wages on time every month. This alone is not comparable to many small factories in Shenzhen." This was also confirmed by Xiaoli, a former Foxconn employee from Hubei.

In 2004, Xiao Li, who just turned 21, entered Shenzhen Foxconn and became a "screw" in the high-speed assembly line of the company. Talking about the reasons for entering the factory in the first place, she said: "Foxconn's salary will be paid on time every month, and will never be in arrears for a day. Moreover, Foxconn is a big factory, and the salary is higher than that of the surrounding small factories." And this is probably also in the early years of Foxconn One reason for being on the "Best Employers" list.

Since 2010, Foxconn has raised the basic salary level of its employees three times in a row. There are rumors that Foxconn will double its salary in August next year, which means that the basic salary of employees will reach 4,400 yuan. Before 2010, the basic monthly salary of Foxconn junior workers was 900 yuan.

According to the calculation of 1 million employees, Foxconn will increase the monthly expenditure of 2.2 billion yuan after giving employees a salary increase. If social security and other items are added up, the annual increase in expenditure will exceed 30 billion yuan. And as labor costs rise, that outlay is likely to increase. In recent years, in the process of Foxconn's transfer to the mainland, its relatively high salary level has even led to an increase in the salary of the mainland's manufacturing industry, which has attracted complaints from business owners large and small.

Xiao Li left Foxconn two years ago and is now the mother of a one-year-old baby, living a leisurely village life in her hometown. As a frugal rural girl, seven years of Foxconn career is enough for her to accumulate a small fortune. She told this reporter: "When I first entered the factory, my salary was only more than 1,000 yuan, and then it gradually increased to 4,000 or 5,000 yuan." Then she added proudly: "Because I started to be a team leader later."

On the one hand, it has to win orders in the fierce international market competition at low cost, and on the other hand, it has to face the rising cost. This is the contradiction of manufacturing in China, including Foxconn. A series of measures taken by Foxconn over the years—whether it is continuous salary increases, expansion to the mainland, or research and development of robots—are all efforts made by the company to reposition itself amid the vortex of contradictions.

Shenzhen, Meiguan Expressway Huawei Export. Following the continuous flow of young people in blue uniforms, is the location of the Foxconn Technology Group Industrial Park, where 40% of the world's consumer electronics products are produced.

Across the road from Foxconn is another mysterious company in Shenzhen, Huawei, and some of its products are handed over to Foxconn. Comparing these two companies, we may be able to find interesting findings: Foxconn is a Fortune 500 company, and so is Huawei; Foxconn has jumped off buildings, and Huawei also has "death from overwork"; in terms of work diligence, Guo Taiming is not inferior to Ren Zhengfei .

But in the eyes of people, Foxconn is the object of condemnation, and Huawei is a company worthy of respect. Part of the reason is that Huawei’s minimum wage is 10 times the average salary of Foxconn; Huawei employees can enjoy the company’s growth dividends, and Foxconn employees can only get reasonable wages by working 80 hours a week.

Through the chaotic appearance, Liu Chengyuan, an on-site management expert and chairman of 3A Enterprise Management Consulting Company, compared the leaders of the two companies and concluded that Guo Taiming is inferior to Ren Zhengfei because he lacks noble feelings. The different pursuits of leaders often lead to very different development paths of enterprises.

According to media records, the leaders of the two companies indeed adhere to diametrically opposed management concepts. In Foxconn's fastest-growing era, Terry Gou shared with the media the secrets of Foxconn's growth: first-class customers, second-class equipment, third-class management, and fourth-class talents. Employees are the least visible and considered the least important factor in Foxconn's growth.

In the book "Ren Zhengfei's Management Log", a sentence is clearly recorded: the development of an enterprise is inseparable from the conscientious efforts of "striver". "Striver" sharing, this sharing is reflected in the double affirmation of the "striver" materially and spiritually.

In the golden age, renewing growth records masked a lack of ideology. However, once the illusion of prosperity fades, one can see who is swimming naked.

And employees have become less easy to "manipulate", which is evident from the frequent incidents of jumping off the building. Chen Wei, President of Hay Group Northeast Asia, said in an interview with this reporter: China is in an unprecedented period of great change and transformation, and the value system and psychological state of employees have been severely impacted. Different generations—sometimes as little as five years apart—have created very different employee values and behavioral characteristics, and have had a huge impact on the evolution of human psychology and behavior.

Different from the mentality of the older employees who are honed by life, the new generation of employees grew up in an era of relatively abundant material, and they are not as tolerant and obedient as the older employees. They are sensitive and vulnerable, and have a much lower tolerance for simple labor and dull life. In Chen Wei's view, the explosive use of social media - such as Weibo, WeChat, etc. - is also fueling the flames, and many employees quickly establish their own reference system through social media - if Guo Meimei is driving a Maserati, why should I Putting a machine on a production line?
However, in the face of various changes, Foxconn has not changed, it still attempts to maintain the posture of naked swimming.

"You have to work at least 11 hours a day. You can't decide the rest time by yourself, it is arranged by the company, usually when there are few orders." Xiaoli recalled. There are also sad messages from Foxconn employees on the Internet: "When working overtime is the most tiring, I really hope someone will kick me in exchange for a moment's rest."

In the famous psychologist and CEO of Xinrong Group Feng Feng According to Yun, Chinese enterprises have entered the era of "complex management", and one of the major manifestations is the management of increasingly complex employees, which requires enterprises to restore employees from production machines to living people, paying attention to their emotional needs and individual differences. However, most Chinese companies, including Foxconn, are still following the outdated management thinking of Frederick Taylor at the end of the 19th century, focusing only on management rigour and discipline, but seldom consider people's factor.

It's time to look back and see if we treat the workers who work day and night on the assembly line to meet the various needs of our material life, because that was originally the building of wealth for the whole society Cornerstone.

But Foxconn did not understand the mystery. The business has high-speed production machinery, but its management machinery is rusted.

Simple, boring and repetitive work is a part of employees' stress, but in Chen Wei's view, lack of sense of security has a greater negative impact on employees' psychology.

Foxconn's Shenzhen factory has a population of 400,000, equivalent to a medium-sized town. But in the seven years at Foxconn, Xiaoli did not make many friends. Because "everyone's working hours are different". There were 10 colleagues who lived in Xiaoli's dormitory at the beginning, but after half a year, some of them could not be named. Not only did the roommates fail to develop the friendship they should have, but they also had grievances with each other: "Some work night shifts, some work day shifts. When you are sleeping, they may just get off work and they can't rest." Two years later, Xiao Li moved out of the dormitory. Renting a place to live is the solution to the problem of rest.

At Foxconn, front-line employees also lack room for advancement. Xiaoli was promoted to line leader four years after entering the factory, and was promoted to team leader a year later, but she still chose to leave because "going up." It's very difficult to walk, I don't want to be in the assembly line all my life."

"Do you still want to come out in the future?" The reporter asked Xiaoli.

She hesitated and said, "Let's take a look."

"Do you still want to join Foxconn?"

"I was already the team leader when I came out. , if you go back to Foxconn, you can only start from the grassroots level, which I don’t want.” It can be seen that she has not seriously considered this issue.

But at that time, this kind of life made many employees, including Xiaoli, feel rootless. They were stray migrant workers in the city, and no one cared when they came and didn't care when they left.

people care. In Feng Yun's view, to break this situation lies in the establishment of a "social support system" for employees - helping employees build their own social network, and obtain material and spiritual help and support from others.

The feeling of rootlessness also leads to excessive employee turnover, which makes Foxconn, a large employer, in a state of lack of employees. to each production line. In Xiao Li's view, the work on the production line has no technical content. "As long as it's not a pig, anyone can do it, but it is required to be fast." Employees who are not so quick in their hands and feet are often reprimanded, and some new employees who work with old employees The little girl in the factory will be scolded and cried by the powerful line leader for not keeping up with the speed.

"Are both the squad leader and the team leader more aggressive?"

"It depends on the individual, some are fierce and some are not."

"You Fierce or not?"

"I sometimes 'roar' them." Xiaoli laughed.

"When you become line leader and team leader, did the company teach you how to manage people?"

"No. We just need to ensure their safety and urge them to follow the quality standards. It seems that at Foxconn, the grassroots managers who have direct contact with employees only act as supervisors, and grassroots leadership is not valued. This is probably also a common phenomenon made in China. People think that the leadership task on the production line is to ensure production, and no one cares what means you use. Hay Group, where Chen Wei works, has been committed to improving the leadership of corporate managers for many years.

But he also admitted that Hay Group's leadership training has not yet penetrated into the step of the team leader on the production line.

Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun also told the media: The line leader is only a few years older than the employees. After the jumping off the building, Foxconn also specially invited experts to train the line leaders.

Another group of people in the managerial role at Foxconn are security guards, who are notorious on the factory floor for hitting people at will. Xiaoli mentioned that in Longhua, Shenzhen, Foxconn's security guards walked together when they went out, and no one dared to act alone, because if they encountered a worker who had been bullied by them in the factory, they would likely be "directed with a knife". What's even more appalling is that there was an employee who couldn't bear the humiliation and fled overnight after stabbing the security guard to death.

"I don't know when it started, but the number of security guards on the periphery has gradually decreased." Obviously Foxconn also realized the problem, but if it is only an increase or decrease in number, but there is no change in concept, I am afraid it is difficult to guarantee that similar incidents will not happen.

There is a lack of communication between grass-roots managers and employees, and it is difficult to establish normal social relationships. Employees can only find comfort in their fellow villagers. Therefore, gang-style rivers and lakes such as "Shandong" and "Henan" have formed in Foxconn. Culture, a little intensification of the conflict, bloodshed may occur between the gangs.

The combination of various factors has brought a great sense of insecurity to employees. And this insecurity is actually the source of the company's real cost. This can be seen from Foxconn's high employee turnover rate.

"Are you afraid of so many colleagues jumping off the building back then?" Xiao Li on the other end of the phone smiled slightly when she heard this question, and seemed a little disapproving. She said: "There's nothing to be afraid of, it's about the individual."

Xiao Li also experienced a colleague's jump from a building. When she was still working as a line leader, there was a young couple on the production line she brought. The two usually had a good relationship, but because the woman refused to go home with the man during the Chinese New Year, the two had an argument, and the boy jumped off the building and committed suicide in anger.

The experts who participated in the investigation of Foxconn that year also admitted that many of the employees jumped off the building due to their own problems, such as emotional entanglements or depression, and even some employees who jumped off the building were attracted by Foxconn’s generous pensions. come. It can be seen that Guo Taiming's grievance is not without a source.

It is conceivable that Foxconn was not directly responsible for the employee jumping off the building, but what people cannot understand is that this company has not done its duty to guide its employees. So, is Foxconn really making no effort at all?

In fact, in order to improve the overall psychological quality of employees, since 2010, Foxconn has carried out a series of employee care activities, set up employee care centers, psychological counseling centers, and established a mutual love group. Just after the vigorous campaign, these measures gradually lost their shape in the process of implementation.

"They asked each workshop to have a team leader to give psychological counseling to employees. And the company doesn't give money, only a few dozen yuan per month for telephone bills. They are not psychological consultants at all. ." Xiaoli told reporters.
“

Then how do they consult the employees?”

“The team leader in this workshop consults the workers in that workshop. There is the contact information of each employee, but it is basically just a poke, and only when the superior urges them, or when the employee is not at work, will the employee be called to ask about the situation." Xiaoli thinks this is purely unnecessary, because "If the employees didn't come to work, the line leaders and team leaders would naturally contact them." In Xiao Li's view, the so-called psychologist is "just a decoration".

"Beijing News" reporter Shen Zhimin also felt the same way. In May of this year, Shen entered Foxconn as a migrant worker after the "two consecutive jumps" in the Foxconn Zhengzhou Airport Park. During the 10-day "hidden", he also experienced a piece of Foxconn's psychological help - a "psychologist" "Consultant" scolded him: You should know the working conditions here before you come, and if you are not comfortable with it, you will leave Foxconn...

According to the data released by the media, in Foxconn, 56.1% of the People said that the problems they complained about through the care hotline "78585" (please help me) are "seldom resolved" or "not resolved at all", and 47.4% of them were "struck with" after complaining. revenge".

In order to prevent the successive jumps from the building, Foxconn began to "spend money to buy information": any employee who found that a colleague around him was in an abnormal mood could notify a psychiatrist or department supervisor. If the situation is true, the company will reward 200 yuan. However, the spearhead of this "people's movement" has also pointed to the wrong target. It is said that a female worker took sleeping pills to treat insomnia, which was reported by colleagues as suicide, and the long-term insomnia employee was also dismissed from the company.

We cannot ask Foxconn to become a perfect company. Compared with many companies that do not have employee care programs, Foxconn has already taken action. The reason why Foxconn's efforts are in vain is probably due to the management philosophy of managers started by Guo Taiming: the company just pretends to value its employees, and the so-called caring behavior is only to reduce trouble for itself. In their eyes, employees are still machines, they just need to be lubricated. "The care of blue-collar workers is a blind spot made in China."

Feng Yun, who has given EAP counseling to many companies, sighed. The full name is Employee Assistance Program, which literally translates to "Employee Assistance Program", which is still new in China. However, Feng Yun carefully retranslated it as "Auxiliary Employee Development Plan" after consideration. In his view, positioning employees as "objects to be helped" firstly identifies employees as weak and "problem people" psychologically. The "assisted employee development plan" treats employees as normal people who need development.

Although industrial psychology has been studying how to simplify the movements of workers on the assembly line to improve efficiency since its early years, it has entered the stage of caring about people, caring about the mental health of employees, and stimulating employees' creativity, but Feng Yun's heart When Rong Group implemented EAP in some manufacturing enterprises, it felt like it was pioneering. "Customers often put forward clear requirements - just get those people." Feng Geng said.

This kind of breaking method makes the company only see the trees and ignore the forest when caring for employees. The result is that this problem is solved, but another problem appears. In Feng Yun's view, the real employee care is actually a systematic project. He even suggested that enterprise managers should read the two books "Management Psychology" and "Organizational Behavior".

In 1913, Henry Ford invented the world's first production line, and since then, industrial manufacturing has entered a period of mechanized mass production. The assembly line reduces costs and increases efficiency, but it also ties employees to the production line, doing the same thing for years and months. The intelligence of blue-collar workers has long been underestimated due to the ability to get work done without thinking.

Even now, many people believe that blue-collar workers don't need honor, they care more about wages. This has led to the rigid assembly-line management of blue-collar workers in the manufacturing industry for a long time, suppressing their vitality and the pursuit of a sense of achievement. Therefore, when it comes to treating blue-collar workers kindly, what comes to people's minds is nothing more than raising wages and helping employees solve psychological problems. If you go a step further, it is just a means of job sharing to enrich work and reduce employee burnout.

However, in Liu Chengyuan's view, simply raising wages for employees will one day hit the ceiling of costs; psychological care in every detail will easily strengthen employees' dependence. Enterprises should focus on increasing employees' sense of achievement and establish a mechanism to stimulate employees' wisdom. This is the basis for "long-term stability" in the manufacturing industry.

He believes that the employees on the assembly line are not part of the machine, but individual creative subjects. They are in the production line for a long time, so it is easier to find the problem, and the small improvements they make are often Bring about the improvement of the efficiency of the whole production line. For example, he gave an example of a worker who invented a magnetic screwdriver. Since he didn't have to bend over to pick up screws, the entire production time was greatly shortened.

But at Foxconn, the real situation is: some employees discovered potential safety hazards and reported them to their leaders, but only received a reprimand: Is this your family's? Why do you care so much? In this case, how can employees be loyal to the company?

How to use blue wisdom? Liu Chengyuan suggested that an innovative platform should be built for workers. The company should provide resource support for employees' technical and process improvement, and give certain material and spiritual rewards. The innovation of mental workers may bring revolutionary leaps, but the little improvements of blue-collar workers on the assembly line can lead to thousands of miles.

Perhaps, Foxconn can learn from Toyota.

Toyota believes that frontline workers are not just cogs in a soulless manufacturing machine, they can be problem solvers, innovators and change agents. While American companies rely on in-house experts to find ways to improve processes, Toyota empowers every employee with the skills, tools and permissions to solve problems and prevent new ones from arising at any time. The result: Year after year, Toyota gets far more value from its employees than its competitors, and Toyota's real advantage lies in its ability to tap into the ingenuity of "average" workers. Taiichi Ohno, the founder of the Tian production system, once said: "The Toyota production system is important, but the creativity, effort and practical ability of the Toyota people are the essence of the production method."

It can be seen that as long as Provide a stage, and employees can generate amazing ideas.

Over the years, Foxconn has devoted itself to the research and development of robots, trying to change the management object from complex people to simple machines, which may reduce a lot of troubles. However, Japan's experience has proved that this road is not smooth: in the past two decades, Japanese companies have also actively switched to automated production after labor costs have risen, but they have found that when producing a small number of complex products, the yield rate is very low. . In addition to causing a lost decade in Japan's economic environment, this also proves that fully automated production is not feasible.

For enterprises, the ultimate destination is still people, and it can only be people!