To the great company that can walk with us out of the darkness.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
"The only way to build a great company that lasts and creates great products is to have the right people and create the right culture for them."
This statement comes from the best-selling book "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" by American management expert Jim Collins. The author once interviewed Steve Jobs, who led Apple out of the crisis of near-extinction in 1997 - Jobs believed that people were the most important factor that could help the company out of the darkness.
On the tidal flat of the times, the fate of the company and the fate of the individual are interdependent.
In 2022, when "Workplace Bonus" was first born, a subtle context began to ferment and grow in the Internet community: Employers and workers are emphasized as a naturally opposing "capitalist vs. labor" relationship.
Subsequently, we witnessed an endless stream of titles like "Post-00s Rectifying XX", followed by a deluge of "Layoff Optimization", and finally, a uniform "Escape" and "Lie Flat" stories in non-fiction media.
These hot topic keywords have formed a contrast spectacle about workplace news in the domestic business public opinion field. And when the health of the business environment is reflected in individuals, the first reaction people want to criticize is the company and a certain "unprofessional HR" in the company.
Even worse, some companies are indeed losing their dignity: they either forget to respect their employees, or no longer be responsible for the mission and vision of the business, or neglect their reputation management in the talent market. They make employees sign strict non-compete and confidentiality agreements and do not allow any employees to be interviewed by the media; all marketing and publicity slogans can only highlight the "product", and must not let the outside world know who in the team has put in the effort.
Some people began to miss the era when the company and the individual achieved each other, and both sides could be brighter and more decent. This prompted us to take action and look for companies that are still willing to adhere to their ideals and have a mutually beneficial relationship with their employees.
At the end of last year, when we first conducted the selection of the "Top 50 Workplace Bonus Employers List", we felt a certain anxiety. The editorial department first referred to other relatively well-known employer brand lists - these lists are often dominated by "big foreign companies" or well-known established companies for a long time. After completing a round of desk research and investigation visits, it is difficult to say exactly how much water and gold content there is.
If we only judge heroes by performance, companies like Temu, Tesla, and some other "companies with polarized business reputation and workplace reputation" may come to mind at the first moment.
And if a company lacks business growth, scarcity, and the decision-makers are extravagant in management - even if a company currently treats its employees well, it may fall into the path of going from glorious to bankrupt like WeWork.
In addition, colleagues participating in the selection work will also wonder: Since we are doing the selection with the mood of "finding a good employer for job seekers", if a company has a bad review on Zhihu or Maimai, does it mean that it is not eligible for selection? If we only look at Chinese local enterprises that have received at least Series B financing and have not yet gone public, will the scope be too narrow?...
It must be admitted that even after excluding a large number of companies under many restrictions and tangled choices, there are still individual employers in the list selected last year who "stepped on mines" this year.
"The media is not a prophet." After reflection, "Workplace Bonus" decided to return to a place closer to the scene.
In the dynamic and changing business world, there are no objects that are always good or bad. This means that in addition to trying our best to achieve a balance in the three dimensions of track, business, and personnel to screen out high-quality employers, we also need to bring the camera and pen closer to the inside of the enterprise, so that (at least seemingly) qualified companies are willing to accept our interviews, push the employees behind the product to the forefront, let the top leader come out to personally interpret the company's employment philosophy, and let the HRs personally state the benefits they promise to the employees.
From the end of last year to now, "Workplace Bonus" has taken the spring (March and April) and autumn (September and October) as the main anchors, and has released a total of 15 companies' factory exploration interviews, so that each recruitment report contains the voices, interpretations, and sharing of a company's HR, employees, or founders for the job seekers.
In this process -
The HR team of a company was hidden behind the scenes throughout the process and did not cooperate with the internal invitation of its colleagues to come out for an interview;
A newly listed company withdrew almost all written presentations related to employee benefits at the last moment before the publication and asked us to delete them;
A star AI company would "reconsider whether to continue the interview" because we did not cooperate with modifying the interview outline after we had already traveled to its location;
An overseas company asked its CEO to "review" our completed draft and came to the conclusion of "requiring a modification of the writing style";
...
For whatever reason, these situations have allowed us to glimpse the internal coordination efficiency and working style under different corporate values, and also made us more convinced of the significance of "being close to the scene".
In order to be as fair and objective as possible, even if we see the other party pulling a long face, we still insist on asking for the official response of the enterprise to the perennial questions such as "layoff history", "management chaos", "non-compliance with social security payment", and "interviewing to get solutions". It is true that enterprises will repeatedly pull and avoid at this level. At this time, the obligation of the media is to repeatedly emphasize the power of truth and sincerity - A company that is candid about past failures and can evolve and improve subsequently can also constitute a footnote to "growth".
For those companies that are willing to share and generously let their employees come to the forefront, "Workplace Bonus" has fully sorted out the relevant information on their selection, use, education, and retention - not only to allow job seekers to understand at a glance and facilitate more in-depth conversations with employers in subsequent interviews, but also to hope that these cases can become a reference for other companies in the market to learn from. In the next era, when a new batch of Chinese startups are looking for a blueprint for employer image and human resource management, the materials and inspiration left to them will not be limited to BBAT.
From the in-depth factory exploration interviews, we have also seen several shared characteristics of some "Workplace Bonus Companies" in addition to excellent training and promotion, and salary and welfare systems:
Long-termism. You may have also noticed that this word has appeared more and more frequently in various entrepreneur interviews in recent years. To implement this argument from "talking the talk" to "walking the walk", on the one hand, the enterprise needs to first accumulate the basic business that can "make money to support the family", and on the other hand, it needs to maintain faith and investment in the continuously loss-making innovation and R & D projects, and not terminate the "correct innovation" due to internal and external pressure.
Companies that practice long-termism properly usually have founders and management with better business awareness and ability, and there will be no pressure overload at the capital end, and even it is not necessary to raise funds by seeking to go public. They are more inclined to firmly hold the dominance of the product and the decision-making power of the company in the hands of the company's own people, and venture capital VC or secondary market funds are not the best solutions. Some people's entrepreneurial funds can be simply from bank loans.
Product power first, and the values are centered on the interests of users. This point is more strongly felt by the Shenzhen enterprises interviewed this year compared to those in Beijing and Shanghai. Super Monkey is willing to take out the last sum of money on the company's account at that time to send Apple Watches to users as an apology; Dame Sugar destroyed the entire batch of products because it re-evaluated that the product close to listing did not meet the "female-friendly" standard, and Xmind designed a new set of fonts for the aesthetics of the application... Everything is to improve product power and user experience.
Globalization and going overseas. Two-thirds of the surveyed enterprises are already doing global business or have just started the layout of going overseas. Among them, companies like Xmind and Insta360, their products are targeted at global users from the beginning of their birth. Geographically speaking, as the newly emerged "China's No. 1 Foreign Trade City" (import + export) this year, Shenzhen does have a stronger industrial potential.
It is worth mentioning that In some domestic fields where technology is still relatively lagging behind, foreign-funded enterprises still have the characteristics of "Workplace Bonus" for job seekers - because in these industries, going to a foreign company can still be regarded as "resume gilding". Therefore, starting this year, we have also included foreign companies in the focus range of "Workplace Bonus Companies".
In December, Workplace Bonus is launching the 2024 workplace year-end review series. Also focusing on the "Eight Bonus Themes" of digital intelligence, dual carbon, big health, cross-border going overseas, semiconductors, big culture and entertainment, advanced manufacturing, and big consumption, this year we have generated a new batch of company lists through independent research.
What is different from previous years is that: The "Top 50 Workplace Bonus Employers List" in 2025 will advance the research startup time by nearly a whole year, and the research and collection will be officially launched from now on.
We will build on the experience of 2024, increase the coverage of interviews and reports on employer companies, and the research process is not limited to interviewing the official statements of enterprises, but also includes collecting clues and feedback from industry veterans, university experts, job seekers, headhunters, and human resource experts.
Among them, the voices of job seekers and practitioners are the most important - they have the most intuitive feeling and the right to speak about whether a company is good or bad in terms of personnel. Therefore, "Workplace Bonus" will add targeted research questionnaires in the process of promoting all topics and activities throughout the year, and incorporate different evaluations of employer enterprises.
The following is a forward-looking schedule for the implementation of the Workplace Bonus plan in 2025. You can scan the code in advance to establish a connection with us, get the priority to obtain the tickets to participate in various activities throughout the year, or become a member of the "Research Corps".
May the belief of "walking out of the darkness" bring us together on the "Ark" of looking for the dividends of the times.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
Layout | Chen Tong
Graphic Design | Chen Tong