DJI, Midea reportedly mandating employees to clock off on time

In some Chinese companies, there has recently emerged a trend to change long working hour corporate culture, with topics of dronemaker DJI and home appliance giant Midea Group mandating their employees to clock off on time trending on China’s social media platforms recently.

DJI reportedly launched a campaign on February 27 to mandate their employees to leave the office at 9 pm. Managers and human resource specialists at the company headquarters in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, would urge the staffers to leave office as soon as the clock sound the 9 o’clock, while the company's Shanghai branch would go to extremes to turn the light out in the entire office, the Securities Times reported on Sunday.

Some employees from the company shared on Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, their experience of being driven out of the company at night, others said they were astonished to find an empty underground parking lot and a crowded metro station when they clocked off at 9 pm.

An employee named Cai Min working at the R&D department based at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters said he used to clock off at 11 pm or midnight but recently he found that almost all the one hundred plus workers on the same floor leave work by around 9:10 pm, according to The Economic Observer.

Over the years, dronemaker giant DJI has made remarkable achievements, whereas complaints about the company’s long-working-hour culture have constantly appeared on social media platforms, such as “I have worked overtime for years,” or “I have seen the Shenzhen Bay at 2 am for countless times.” Still some others complained that every time they take a taxi home, the driver would think they were catching an early flight, reported Securities Times.

The company did not give a specific comment on this matter in response to an inquiry from the Global Times on Monday, while confirming the positive momentum of the change.

Coincidentally, topics about the home appliance giant Midea Group mandating its employees to clock off at 6:20 pm also trended on China’s X-like platform Sina Weibo on Monday and sparked heated discussions. The company replied to the media inquiry that the company established at the beginning of this year six strict regulations to simplify work procedures, including a ban on meetings after work and unnecessary overtime driven by formalism, according to the media outlet Economic View.

Fang Hongbo, chairman and CEO of the company, released in January a document requiring to simplify work measures to save time for creating valuable things for users, according to the Securities Times.

The official Weibo account of Midea Group responded to the trending topic, replying at the comment section that “the editor of the company’s account remained silent in smile while simply browsing through the trending topic.” Other Weibo accounts of different home appliances such as refrigerator related to the company also confirmed that the employees of the company “really do not work overtime.”

It is noteworthy that since the beginning of this year, sentiment against the rat race have been growing. The government work report unveiled during this year’s two sessions said China will take comprehensive steps to address rat race competition to develop a unified national market.