"I actually don't like working!" Wang Zhengyan, the 36-year-old executive vice president of Chia Pang Plastics (hereinafter referred to as Chia Pang), said that he had been pulled back from the gate of death twice. The most recent time was when he was in college, he was alone While walking around the Taiwan island, I suddenly suffered from myocarditis in Taitung. Fortunately, I was rushed to the hospital in time and my life was saved. "At that time, I felt strongly that life should not be spent all the time working to make money, but should be enriched."
Wang Zhengyan's LINE header post contains the motto "The value of life lies in happiness, health and happiness." He believes that if a job cannot bring these three values, then it loses its meaning. When he took over Chia Pang in 2016, he operated with this concept in mind, so he applied for B Corporation certification, hoping to build Chia Pang into an enterprise that takes into account both personal interests and social welfare.
"I actually don't like working"! The second generation takes over to lead the inheritance and implements three days off per week
Paying attention to the well-being of employees (taking into account work-life balance) is one of the core concepts of B Corporation. In 2024, Chia Pang broke the rules. As traditional industries generally face shortages of manpower, long working hours and lack of flexibility, there are only 37 employees. Chia Pang, a plastic pipe wholesaler with employees and revenue of less than 500 million yuan, is the first among its peers to implement a three-day week off.
Ran Xianglei, director of Chia Pang Plastics and his wife who runs a joint business with Wang Zhengyan, also supports three days off per week. She was once a workaholic, but started to change her mind in 2020. At that time, her father, who was a super salesman and the company's top performer, suffered from liver cancer. One month before his death, his wish was to go back to work and get performance bonuses. He also told her to take good care of her mother. She lamented: "Dad worked all his life for others. I don't want to live like this for a moment for myself."
Wang Zhengyan said frankly that even if the boss gives more leave and wants employees to relax, many colleagues still feel unable to let go of their sense of responsibility at work. When he first took over Chia Pang Plastics, he implemented a 10-day independent leave system per year. Regardless of the seniority of his colleagues, they were given 10 extra days of leave every year in addition to the special leave. "As a result, colleagues did not take all the leave and ended up converting it into money." For this reason, He was troubled for a while, and then saw the news that Iceland had successfully implemented a three-day weekend in 2020 and the book "The 4 Day Week: How the flexible work revolution can increase productivity, profitability and well-being, and create a sustainable future" was published, and decided to plan in this direction.
How to implement three days off per week? Try it out first and let frontline colleagues think about solutions.
The idea of implementing a three-day weekend came up in 2020. After 4 years of careful consideration, they finally launched a trial implementation in the company in September 2023. During this period, Ran Xianglei admitted that she was struggling: Can the successful three-day-weekly experience abroad be implemented in Taiwan? After implementation, will employees be able to handle their daily workload? Will the company's revenue be affected? Will customer service be interrupted?
Faced with these problems, the two decided to first visit companies that have implemented it in Taiwan: Adore Marketing and Meimen Design to learn about their experiences. Wang Zhengyan shared that the results of their implementation were very good, with employee engagement and team cohesion improved. "It's just that their approach cannot be used by Chia Pang." Adore and Meimen are brand marketing and interior design companies, and customers can make appointments in advance. In terms of service time, they have adopted a mechanism whereby all employees in the company have one day off per week. However, this is not feasible for Chia Pang who needs to serve customers immediately.
Ran Xianglei said: "When we were hesitant, one of the CEOs said, your employees are not selected from thousands, why don't you trust your colleagues?" At the moment, I was inspired by his words and found that the leader didn't even want to break his head. Yes, it is the frontline colleagues who are really encountering the problem. Why not try it out first and let the team discuss how to deal with it.
In September 2023, they first held a company-wide meeting and announced a three-month, three-day-a-week trial starting in October. They also opened a Google form to ask colleagues to imagine what situations they might encounter after implementation, and then the supervisor led the team to discuss it. "As a result, no one responded to the questions in the first two weeks!" Ran Xianglei asked the associate manager to learn about the situation, only to find that everyone was worried about the failure of the trial and did not dare to express their opinions.
In order to eliminate doubts, they held another all-staff meeting to clearly explain the reasons for implementing the three-day week off, and conveyed the position that it would be okay if the trial failed. Wang Zhengyan told his colleagues: "If it succeeds, it means that those who need to work overtime will have the opportunity to reduce their working hours; if it fails, they will also gain valuable experience. Maybe the current working methods need to be adjusted. Maybe if we try again next year, we may have a chance of success." He encouraged Treat these 3 months as a game, have fun and ask questions.
After the mental construction was completed, various questions began to pour into the form. Afterwards, supervisors from operating bases such as Tainan, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Hsinchu began discussing with colleagues how to respond to the problem. Assuming that each base has business, warehousing and logistics personnel to serve customers every day, it is necessary to divide the manpower into two groups and take turns to take Monday and Friday off. In addition, each base also sets up its own work record form and arranges job agents to handle work handover tasks.
Organize "efficiency" classes to share working methods to improve productivity
Chia Pang warehousing and logistics staff Chen Jiaze said that there will be an adaptation period when the three-day weekend is first implemented, mainly because the work pace and density will increase. For example, in the past, it took 4 days to prepare all the goods for delivery, but now it needs to be completed in 2 to 3 days. Therefore, you need to be more focused when you go to work and arrange your work planning in advance. However, if the work is really overwhelming, other partners can take over the next day. "Like me, I can deliver goods, prepare goods, deal with customers, and help share the work with the business."
Ran Xianglei also offers internal "work efficiency" courses, asking partners to share ways to improve productivity. For example, business colleagues will plan the best route to visit customers and visit three nearby companies together.
Wang Zhengyan said: "The most exciting thing for us is that during the experiment, customers did not notice that Chia Pang had implemented a three-day week off!" Not only was the customer experience not affected, but the employee experience was also improved. Many colleagues reported that they had better Make more independent arrangements for your time, including: colleagues picking up their children from class early, taking their elders back for medical appointments, or treating yourself to a massage and spa, and creating more travel opportunities for families to better balance work and life.
However, the three-day holiday still caused difficulties for the manpower-strapped stronghold. At the review meeting three months after implementation, the Tainan branch reported that there were only five people at the branch, and sometimes only two people were on duty a day. If there was a lot of customer demand that day, manpower would be tight.
Ran Xianglei said: "Originally, I wanted to help the Tainan base to supplement people, but my colleagues said that the current workload did not require an additional manpower." Therefore, they proposed a "flexible three-day weekly off" approach. The original company regulations were to have Monday or Friday off, and employees could Adjust to choose one day off on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, and solve the problem by spreading the number of vacation days. If there are too many orders in that week and it is not possible for everyone to take three days off, colleagues can accumulate vacation first and then choose to make up for it.
"Three days off per week must be implemented from the bottom up, and colleagues must cooperate voluntarily to achieve success." Wang Zhengyan said that Chia Pang will leave the supporting methods to the team to think about. After the experiment ends in 2023, the decision-making power to continue the implementation in 2024 will also be given to the team. Colleagues, colleagues not only have to sign a consent form for implementation, but also use their personal "reward points" to redeem this benefit. "We hope that colleagues understand the meaning of work and balance and do not take this benefit for granted."
The "reward points" system is a system implemented by Chia Pang since 2016. As long as colleagues complete tasks and provide proof, they can receive points. The accumulated points can be exchanged for gifts such as home appliances, employee travel ticket upgrades, and doubled performance bonuses to encourage them. .
If an organization treats its employees well first, then employees will serve customers attentively.
However, why do small companies with less than 50 people and annual revenue of less than 500 million dare to implement it? Wang Zhengyan said that before implementation, they had calculated the impact of personnel costs, and it was within a reasonable range. "What we consider is whether this cost payment can make partners more motivated to work, and will it create better things?" If it can happen, we'll do it."
From a financial and operational perspective, companies still need to make stable profits when implementing a three-day weekend. In addition, Chia Pang creates competitive advantages by providing perfect and considerate services and solving problems for customers. Therefore, improving employee experience can drive Customer satisfaction and loyalty.
"We believe that starting from the company, we should treat employees well first, and employees will serve more enthusiastically on the front line, thereby winning the trust and orders of customers." Chia Pang's goal is to obtain reasonable profits, rather than pursuing profit maximization. On the other hand, if a company adopts price-cutting competition and cares about 1% to 2% gross profit every quarter, it will be difficult to implement a three-day week off.
Ran Xianglei believes that the reason why Chia Pang is able to do this is related to its corporate culture of "put yourself in one's shoes". Three days off per week requires a high degree of teamwork. Colleagues must hand over unfinished work on Thursday to their partners on Friday and assist each other with limited on-duty personnel. If everyone in the company does their own thing, it will not be easy to implement.
Therefore, selecting people is a very important link. Ran Xianglei revealed that Chia Pang is very strict in selecting candidates. Only one out of 100 resumes may receive an interview notice, and the search for one vacancy will take several months. "We hope to find partners who are optimistic, positive and willing to help others." This is the case for all colleagues in the company. They also hired a super salesperson to join the "Chia Pang people's characteristics" that they had planned, but he was unwilling to share his itinerary with the team, so they had to ask him to leave later.
Since the implementation of the three-day weekend, not only has the number of overtime hours worked by colleagues not increased, but the company's gross profit margin has increased due to improved work efficiency and customer satisfaction. This approach has also attracted the attention of job seekers who value work-life balance. Chia Pang's resume count on the human resources platform is 12 times that of its peers.
Wang Zhengyan said that he is not advocating that everyone take three days off per week. Chia Pang uses this method to convey that the company cares about the work and life quality of its partners, and hopes that operators can think more about how to provide more support for employees and create altruism. positive benefits.
Chia Pang Plastics
Established in 1997, it specializes in selling acid and alkali-resistant plastic pipes. In 2016, executive vice president Wang Zhengyan and executive director Ran Xianglei took over the operation. At the time of the takeover, the annual revenue was approximately 60 million yuan. The two transformed the company into the first in Taiwan's plastic industry B Corporation, with revenue of 240 million yuan in 2023. They attract the attention of job seekers through innovative policies such as award points and three days off per week. The average age of the company's colleagues is 10 years younger than before taking over in 2016, and the amount of resumes on the human resources platform is 12 times that of peers.
