The present wide-ranging staff reduction in Zhongguancun enterprises gives such a signal: Under the unfavorable macro-economic environment and micro-enterprise climate, China's IT industries have been at the time which makes it impossible for them to strive for survival without making a change.

Furthermore, such a kind of change not only remains at the level of IT firms or manufacturers, but will penetrate into the upstream and downstream industries and to IT employees and the consumers of IT products.

Following is the article by Chen Xiaorui, guest correspondent of the newspaper "Global Time". According to his observation, IT white-collar workers begin to be hesitating about planning for their future professions.

Storm of Staff-Reduction Stirred Up in Zhongguancun

Zhongguancun is experiencing the test of a storm of staff-cut which is unprecedented in the history of Zhongguancun's development. It is particularly noteworthy that not only big companies in Zhongguancun, such as Henderson , Founder of Peking University, Thunis of Tsinghua University, are involved in it, but also Legend Group, the lead of Chinese IT industry, cannot remain unaffected.

On November 2, Legend published a statement, saying, "Legend Group carries out the work of eliminating those standing at the last position and optimizing staff, This is the requirement of a conventional work in the management of human resources of the Group, the ongoing work of optimizing staff is a normal readjustment of the management of the Group's human resources." At the same time, Legend frankly admits, "The proportion of staff optimized has increased from the original 5 percent to this year's 10 percent, and this optimization work is to be carried out once every six months, this is different from the past when this work was accomplished in one stroke at the end of the year."

Immediately thereafter, the news about Henderson's plan to drastically downsize the staff spread very quickly. Inspector-general Qiu Kaisheng of the company's brand indicates: the range of Henderson's staff reduction is not so big as what is rumored, the number of staff to be reduced in the next several months may range between 50 and 100, accounting for about 5-10 percent of the company's total staff.

In fact, there was inkling of a tidal wave of staff reduction in Zhongguancun IT enterprises early this year, it came out first from the Internet, then it spread like the collapsing of dominoes, as a result, the situation has appeared in the talent market in which the job-seeking intention of IT personnel has outdone the intention of demand for the first time. At the same time, according to the estimation of departments concerned, staff reduction in Zhongguancun enterprises will continue, there will be 4,000 people who need to seek other jobs within the year and this situation will not be reversed before the middle of 2002.

IT Enterprise: There is the saying that "optimization of personnel" will be used to replace the term "staff-reduction"

Just as Legend who used "optimization of personnel" in stead of the term "staff-reduction" in its statement. When interviewed by reporters, high-ranking officials or managers of human resources of other companies also mostly evade using the term "staff-reduction" on the grounds that this is the company's normal structural readjustment of workforce, and they do not want to go into detail.

While speaking about staff reduction, Wang Endong, vice-president of the Langchao Electronic Information Industry Co. Ltd., indicated, "Some workers did leave the company some time ago, but he attributed the departure of these people to the company's adjustment of the organizational set-up. Some old work posts will inevitably be abolished, while at the same time, some new jobs will be added. This is a kind of very normal situation of exhaling the old and inhaling the new".

As a matter of fact, staff reduction is unavoidable for any enterprise. Large international corporations are always completely at ease about this, some companies even regard staff-reduction as a move taken to re-establish confidence in the capital market Statistics show that many international IT magnates are conducting large-scale reduction of employees: Motorola has decided to cut the number of workers by 22,000, or 15 percent of its total staff, since December last year. In order to adapt itself to changes in the market environment, CISCO has planned to cut the number of employees by 8,500. Philip announced it planned to reduce staff by 6,000-7,000.

Employees: Threat to their sense of job security

The present storm of staff reduction is not a fracture to enterprises, to a certain extent, it even plays the role of optimizing enterprise competitiveness. In comparison, attack on Zhongguancun employees' sense of job security is the greatest negative effect. In the present storm of staff reduction, employees, whether they have quitted their jobs or remain at their work posts, are shrouded in a passive mood and become hesitant about the plan for their future professions.

Programmer Qi Zhi has been laid off. When this correspondent called on him, he was playing at home. He said, "He had all along been very busy in his software company, and it is rare to be so leisure as he is at the moment." Be that as it may, he still looks somewhat lonely and desolate. Although Little Zhao with Legend Group is not affected by the wave of staff reduction, he is not light-hearted at all, the sense of crisis has made him decide to postpone his plan for buying a house.

The present wide-ranging staff reduction in Zhongguancun enterprises gives such a signal: Under the unfavorable macro-economic environment and micro-enterprise climate, China's IT industries have been at the time which makes it impossible for them to strive for survival without making a change. Furthermore, such a kind of change not only remains at the level of IT firms or manufacturers, but will penetrate into the upstream and downstream industries and to IT employees and the consumers of IT products.

( December 03, 2001)