Case Story 4: Line Manager – WeChat and WeSupport lessons a helping hand in managing young workers
Liu Qifang, 47, understands the struggles and hardships faced by line workers all too well, especially those separated from their kids. Her working life began at the age of 17 when she left her hometown in Hunan Province to take up a job at a glove-making factory. Between her role as a factory worker, Qifang managed to raise two kids who are now enrolled in college. Since 2007, Qifang has been working as a line manager at a ceramics factory in Dongguan, where she lives in a Wi-Fi covered factory dorm with her husband.
WeChat is one of the few apps Qifang has on her smart phone. At the very beginning, very few of her same-aged friends used WeChat, as most of them were like her: not adept at using smart phones. But when she saw how young people were using WeChat to message and video chat with their families, she decided to give it a go. As she works far away from home, Qifang rarely gets to see her kids. WeChat however, helps to bridge the distance. Before she got the app, her communication with her kids was limited to one call a week. Now she hears their voice, reads their messages and sees their photos on a daily basis. She’ s thrilled that she can be in touch with her children on a daily basis.
What’ s more, WeChat has become an indispensable communication aid to her. Thanks to WeChat, she now interacts with friends more and she uses it to send messages to workers when it’ s not so appropriate to talk to them about certain issues face-to-face.“ This method helps to avoid unnecessary conflicts and misunderstandings,” she tells us.
Qifang now directly supervises 47 workers on her line; among them are five workers under the age of 25. When we asked her whether she has encountered any difficulties with managing the young workers, she replied:“ Management is a kind of art. If you are doing it from your heart, it is not difficult at all. But if you are not focused, you may get lost.”
CCR CSR’ s posts on line managers are among the few articles she has read on WeChat. She says these have given her great inspiration in management and communication and she feels they can be applied in practice. According to Qifang, the relationship between her and the young workers is very good, which she believes is due to her communication style:“ I always explain to them very patiently when they have technical problems at work. When they have done a good job, I will praise and encourage them at the morning meeting.” Qifang rarely has conflicts with her workers. Whenever there is a problem, she reports it to her supervisor and together they pragmatically solve the problem, thus avoiding wasting time on futile arguments.
Being so far away from home and new to the factory environment, Qifang thinks it is very normal for the young workers to have negative emotions from time to time. When she notices that workers are depressed or not concentrating on work, she gives them a buffer period, some space and she makes sure not to blow the issue up in front of other workers. She then talks to the young workers in private, allows them to speak out and then finds an appropriate solution. Quite often, the problem is that young workers think their tasks are much harder than others and that they have to put in so much more effort than others. This perception leads them to believe that they are not fairly treated and results in negative attitudes. In such situations, Qifang will adjust the work arrangement and rotate their tasks so that everyone can learn new skills and share the workload.
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