How to treat the problem of high-paying employment in enterprises

The pain and sequelae of high-paying employment? Author: Zhang Shixin (founder/chairman of Shanghai Qirong Consulting Company)

Under the pressure of a strong "talent market", more and more companies have to adopt a high-paying recruitment policy. These companies believe that if they don't adopt a high-paying policy, they won't be able to recruit talents, and if they don't use them well, they won't be able to keep them.

However, is it reliable to recruit talents with high salaries? Can high salary bring synchronous growth in performance? Do people with high salaries appreciate the company and focus on their work? What are the lasting consequences of the high salary policy? What conditions are needed to support the high salary policy? In my opinion, many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs did not think clearly about these problems when they decided to offer high salaries to talents.

I know it may be unpopular to talk about this topic, but I really can't hold it any longer. I have to say it. ?

1, what is a high salary?

"High salary" is a comparative concept. My definition of high salary is: higher or much higher than the salary level of the same position in the same industry.

For example, if your company belongs to the traditional manufacturing industry, the annual salary you offer to your director-level talents is 500,000 yuan, while the average annual salary of director-level talents in the same industry is about 400,000 yuan, then the salary your company gives to director-level talents belongs to the high salary category. If there is a "great" enterprise in your industry that offers its director-level talents an annual salary of 600,000 yuan or more, it is super high salary.

In essence, it is a last resort to adopt a high salary policy. But rationality is very important, accounting is critical, and strategies can be chosen (this can only be understood after reading this article).

2, suitable for high-paying enterprises.

One reason is simple: if you hire a director with an annual salary of 6.5438+0.2 million yuan, and this director can earn 6.5438+0.2 million yuan for you every year, or although he can't directly earn 6.5438+0.2 million yuan for you, it can bring great potential contribution to the future development of the enterprise, then it is not an exaggeration to give him an annual salary of 6.5438+0.2 million yuan. The question is, if you pay a high salary, can the contribution made by talents be greater than or equal to the salary? ?

In reality, there are many enterprises that adopt high salary policy, such as Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, Country Garden, Evergrande and so on, as well as financial industry, venture capital industry, game industry and some cutting-edge technology companies. However, it needs to be recognized that the reason why these companies dare to offer high salaries to talents while ensuring their effective operation and worry-free future is largely because they have three common characteristics: First, there are many opportunities in their industries, and as long as they can get excellent talents, they can get high return on investment; Second, these companies can choose the best talents because they are willing to compete; Third, these companies have a strict and mature internal elimination mechanism, and they can't get along without high-performance talents.

In other words, if a company does not have the above three characteristics, but adopts a high salary policy, it will definitely have problems or even "die".

3, not suitable for high-paying enterprises.

In my opinion, any enterprise that does not have the above three characteristics should not adopt a high salary policy. In particular, the following three types of enterprises must be cautious when trying to adopt a high salary policy.

First, traditional manufacturing and service companies. Because the industry opportunities of such companies are very limited, it is almost impossible to bring about rapid progress in performance by adopting a high salary policy. This has little to do with the ability and quality of talents; There are not many opportunities in the industry, even a genius is useless.

Second, it took a lot of effort, and few decent candidates came to the company. Even if such companies offer super-high salaries, it is impossible to recruit truly outstanding talents, which will only make money "wasted".

Third, unprofitable startups. Some of these companies are used to spending investors' money, thinking that after attracting talents with high salaries, they will certainly get more money, but with a little carelessness, the game of "passing parcels" can't be played. Another part of startups will imagine the future too well. They believe that some people have a future, but they don't know that the more "capable people", the more worrying their future will be. In fact, only when the company has a future will it attract real talents.

4. Lessons from foreign-funded enterprises

Foreign-funded enterprises have always been the benchmark for China enterprises to learn. However, in the past decade, a large number of foreign-funded enterprises have been shrinking their business in the China market, and it is foreseeable that a large number of foreign-funded enterprises will leave the China market in the future.

Some people don't understand: foreign-funded enterprises have been so worshipped by Chinese enterprises; They have excellent technology, abundant funds, powerful brands, advanced management and outstanding talents. How can they not establish themselves in the China market for a long time?

A few years ago, I wrote a special article to analyze that the core reason why foreign-funded enterprises lost the China market was that their fixed labor costs were too high, which led to their overall operating costs being too high. In the case of high sales Mao Lijiao, large sales scale and increasing sales volume year after year, the high labor cost and operating cost are not a problem (often covered up). However, with the economy going from prosperity to recession (although it is staged), with the intensification of competition and the reduction of market opportunities, the excessive operating costs are increasingly becoming an obstacle for foreign-funded enterprises to continue to succeed in the China market.

5. Three consequences of high salary policy

Enterprises that are not suitable for adopting a high-paying policy, but "have to" adopt a high-paying policy, generally have three consequences:

First, most people who are attracted by high salaries are speculators who only care about immediate interests. Their values and abilities are generally not higher than the middle level, because people with values and abilities higher than the middle level are usually "famous flowers", and they are often not easily attracted by immediate high salaries.

Second, a high salary will prevent "rotten people" from leaving their jobs. Not long ago, I interviewed a client company and learned that some "talents" are not optimistic about the company's reality and future, nor about the company's products and culture, but they still work in the company. Later, I learned that because the salary offered by the company was too high, they could not find a job with the same high salary outside.

Third, it will prevent real talents from joining the company. Because of the above two problems, the management status and future prospects of some enterprises that adopt high salary policy are definitely worrying, and real talents will not work in such companies. Because, truly talented people, great talents pay more attention to the future of the company, and they know that a company without a bright future is unreliable.

6. Talents under the high salary policy

There used to be a saying called "high salary and honesty". Even if this statement is correct, for most people, high salary can't "keep diligence". This is because there are many talents who only value immediate interests and have no lofty career ambitions; Once they get a high salary, they will concentrate on living a comfortable life. Some of them are willing to work overtime and work hard at first, but they will soon be greedy for enjoyment and unwilling to make progress, only willing to maintain the status quo.

The most serious problem is that such "talents" must refuse to change because they are worried that change will harm their vested interests. When we were working as a partner system for enterprises, we noticed a phenomenon: most people with high salaries were not interested in implementing the employee stock ownership plan or the partner system, because they didn't care about the future of the company, they didn't want the company to put forward more requirements for them, and they didn't want the company to tie them to a "chariot".

Unfortunately, most people who get high salaries by constantly changing jobs are always ready to get higher salaries by changing jobs next time.

7. Two prerequisites for solving the problem

If a company wants to get out of the misunderstanding of recruiting and retaining people through high salary, it needs to solve two premise problems first.

First, companies should have career dreams and business logic. Because, with career dreams and business logic, it is possible to attract real talents to work with themselves. At that time, Cai Chongxin, Peng Lei and others were willing to give up high salaries and follow Ma Yun with symbolic salaries, because Ma Yun had career dreams and business logic. Remember: people who fight for career dreams and business logic with you are more reliable; On the contrary, anyone who pays attention to salary and doesn't care (or pretends to care) about the enterprise's career dreams and business logic deserves high vigilance.

Second, the company's organizational division of labor model and management culture should be effective. There are serious problems in the enterprise management concept of relying on talents and geniuses for development. True genius or genius is rare; Even if there is, most of them are taken away; Even if there are such people who need to find a job occasionally, they may not be mixed with you; Even if they are willing to hang out with you, you may not be able to make good use of them. The effective way is to conquer the world by a team of several professionals. Using professionals has many advantages: first, it is easy to recruit people; Second, good management, third, good training; Fourth, it is easy to raise. Please understand why. ?

8. The "grasping hand" to solve the problem

With the above two premises, to solve the talent management problems faced by enterprises, its "grasping hand" can only be performance. In the book "3S Performance Appraisal", we repeatedly stressed that performance is the "bull's nose" to solve the problem of talent management. There are four reasons.

First, recruiting talents with performance thinking can ensure that "people are not blind" to the greatest extent. For those who can really create high performance for the enterprise, it is no problem for you to give him a high salary. The problem is that there are many talents who will convince you that they can create high performance for you when applying. My experience shows that those who flaunt that they can create high performance, but insist that you pay a high salary first, are usually just "gentlemen who pay lip service." Practice has proved that people with pure values and high ability generally don't ask for excessive irresponsible basic salary, but pay more attention to performance pay and income sharing. ?

Second, it is more reliable to set salary according to performance. Performance pay should account for more than 70% of a person's annual salary. Many bosses often have an illusion that Huawei can attract outstanding talents because of its high salary level. Therefore, I mistakenly believe that as long as we offer high salaries to talents, we can attract outstanding talents to join; With the participation of outstanding talents, your own enterprise will develop like Huawei. What they don't know is that Huawei is a hero based on performance. Most of the salaries of Huawei employees come from performance awards. People who can't create achievements can't stay in Huawei for a day.

Third, performance management is the main axis of enterprise management. As long as performance management is done well, all other management problems are not big problems. The problem is that those enterprises that always hope to solve the talent management problem through high salary are often unwilling to work hard in the direction of performance management. They usually just regard performance management as a common management problem, and usually just expect HR to solve this problem.

Finally, cultivating talents with the thinking of performance management will not deviate from the correct direction of talent management and ensure the rapid growth of talents. This is because performance is a hard thing and cannot be empty. It is incomprehensible that many enterprises are willing to spend a lot of money on employee training every year, but they don't know or are unwilling to spend time and energy to establish and improve their performance management system. ?

9. How to change course?

For the enterprises that have adopted the high salary policy and are trapped by it, they will face a very difficult choice to get out of the predicament caused by it. For such enterprises, I have the following two suggestions.

First, maintain the status quo, try our best to solve the problem and do it well. As for the consequences, we can only resign ourselves to fate. For enterprises that have adopted this proposal, I will stop here and have no further suggestions.

Second, completely change the salary system. The way to change is not to reduce the salary return of talents, but to link the salary return of talents with company performance and personal performance. The overall tone is: let talents get more professional returns. This change may cause some talents to leave the company, but in the long run, it is good for the company. Bosses can think like this: since this change is good for both individuals and companies, if someone chooses to leave, he should not be a real talent, at least not a talent with pure values and reliable ability needed for the long-term development of enterprises, because a talent with pure values and reliable ability will surely realize what this change means to the company and to himself.