Hai Di Lao Hot Pot is a Chinese organization founded in 1994 that owns a chain of restaurants. The organizational chart of the company is hierarchical, with both management positions in small numbers and the vast majority of service employees, but the model of this company’s hierarchy is unusual. A distinctive feature of this company is its inverted pyramid structure. This organizational model involves inverting the classic hierarchy pyramid with a small group of directors at the top to many employees at the bottom. Now workers are at the top, which gives some power and responsibility to workers who feel better about their involvement in the company (Trost, 2020). These factors increase employee commitment to the company, allowing for a more flexible team with refined communication mechanisms within the organization.
In addition, specifically in the Hai Di Lao Hot Pot case, the company is developing this model in a customer-centric manner. Unusual creativity in customer service resonates with similarly creative responses from customers, making the Hai Di Lao Hot Pot employee experience unique (Liu & Jie, 2017). The use of content analysis, as well as the most detailed accounting of the needs of both employees and customers, created an original approach in the company that can be successfully used in many service-oriented organizations.
The success of the Hai Di Lao Hot Pot has been the subject of many researchers, as fast-food restaurants do not require excellent culinary skills, and recipes can be easily copied. However, many scientists agree that the uniqueness of the Hai Di Lao Hot Pot is still dictated by its internal organization of the inverted pyramid. First, every employee can express ideas for the company’s development and must be heard, which increases the value of human resources in the company and employees’ satisfaction with the workplace (Chen & Zeng, 2018). Second, the most critical employees become those who interact directly with the client, which sets high the possibility of client-oriented decisions in the leadership. Thirdly, heightened responsibility is imposed not only on service employees but also on managers under increasing pressure.
The inverted pyramid model helps a company communicate expectations by being close to customers and employees who, within this model, have more opportunities to speak out within the company. Performance control has usually been described and successfully applied in the classical pyramid models, but the new look has its pros and cons. Managers also carry out control over the actions of service employees, which receive power only in matters of improving the company while retaining responsibility for their direct service responsibilities. Productivity is monitored using both classic revenue and order metrics and a customer feedback system. Technologies make it possible not only to compose the overall picture but also to assess the quality of the work of each employee. In addition, Hai Di Lao Hot Pot’s clearly defined goal of being socially responsible to both employees and customers makes employees feel confident while improving productivity and job satisfaction. Hai Di Lao Hot Pot has opened its library and experimental school and also supports children’s creativity by displaying drawings by little artists in their restaurants (About Hai Di Lao, 2021). Consequently, social responsibility is not limited to supporting employees; events are nationwide.
However, these models promise to improve work efficiency only at a long-term distance, since the application of the inverted pyramid model requires significant restructuring of the entire organization of the company, their functions, responsibilities, and capabilities, as well as taking into account all aspects of the hierarchical model with the definition of transparent relationships and communication channels between company employees. Even though Hai Di Lao Hot Pot is a relatively young company in the market, taking fresh approaches to organizational issues allowed it to enter the international market and remain successful in customers’ eyes worldwide.
References
About Hai Li Dao. (2021). Web.
Chen, H., & Zeng, Y. (2018). Analysis on Employee Motivation Management of Haidilao From the Perspective of Confucianism Wulun. David Publishing Company www. davidpublisher. com, 17(11), 542-546.
Liu, Y. H., & Jie, X. W. (2017). Exploring Haidilao Service Creativity: The Perspective of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In 2017 2nd International Conference on Humanities and Social Science (HSS 2017).
Trost, A. (2020). The Structural and Cultural Context. In Human Resources Strategies (pp. 53-80). Springer, Cham.