ByteDance Cancels Talent Development Center in Effort to Streamline HR Department
The Paper reported on Wednesday that ByteDance’s internal email showed that the internet giant had recently cancelled its Talent Development Center. The existing team members have been given priority for internal transfers, and if there were no suitable positions, they would likely leave the company. ByteDance has not responded to the report yet.
Talent Development Center refers to the training team under the human resources department, which is mainly responsible for the training of new employees and supplier management. In the internal email, ByteDance said that before making this decision, there were many discussions with the employees involved in the closure. Two factors gave rise to this decision. First, the positioning of the existing team was out of touch with the needs of the company. Secondly, the skills and experience accumulated by the team do not meet the current needs of the company.
The internal email was blunt about the restructuring, “Employees in some departments are very busy, but they do not actually create great value, which not only wastes company resources, but also makes a lot of noise and wastes other employees’ time.”
ByteDance plans to continue to streamline its HR department and adjust its functions and divisions. “The growth and development of our employees will still be an important issue for the company. In the future, we must study how to do this well in a more pragmatic way. We must focus resources on things with heavy foundation and high leverage,” ByteDance said.
It is worth noting that Liang Rubo, the new CEO of ByteDance, used to be Chief Human Resources Officer (CHO) of ByteDance, responsible for the promotion of organizational construction and professional development. During his tenure as CHO, the number of employees in ByteDance has increased quite a bit.
Some insiders analyzed that in the HR department, the training team is one of the indicators reflecting the performance of the whole company. “Once the performance is good, all departments will ask for more training. When the performance is not good the training department would be laid off since they cannot directly generate income.”
The closure of the Talent Development Center at ByteDance follows the tides of layoffs that have been happening within the Internet industry.
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Earlier, some media outlets reported that Chinese video platform iQiyi was laying off employees, with a layoff ratio of about 20% to 40%, and the compensation for layoffs has not been settled. Chinese short video platform Kuaishou has also started a new round of internal optimization and layoffs. Its commercialization teams in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen would complete the transformation before the end of the year, and some business lines would be cancelled.
