Creating an Outstanding Workplace
VNET adheres to sustainable talent cultivation, fully respects and strictly protects the rights and interests of employees, and focuses on fairness, diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace. We also care for the physical and mental health of employees, as well as their personal welfare. We are committed to creating a working environment that is conducive to the personal development of all employees.
Rights and interests protection
VNET strictly complies with the Labour Law of the People's Republic of China, the Provisions on the Prohibition of Using Child Labour, and other relevant laws and regulations that is relevant to the standardization of our employee management. As a signatory to the UNGC, we also adhere to international treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Core Labour Standard. We compiled the Employee Manual and Implementation Measures and Human Resources Management in the VNET Group and Regions to further regulate the protection of employee rights and interests.
VNET takes a "zero-tolerance" approach to any discrimination or harassment and prohibits all forms of discrimination or harassment, including sexual harassment. We prohibit all forms of forced labour and child labour. If illegal employment is found, we will immediately take serious actions against those responsible for the work based on the severity of the circumstances and report the cases to the local labour security administration. This year, there were no incidents of employee discrimination, harassment, forced labour, child labour, etc.
Diversity and gender equality
VNET highly recognizes that a diverse and inclusive team can bring a diversity of perspectives. VNET insists on recruiting, assessing, motivating and training every employee equally, without any discrimination based on race, ethnicity, region, gender, age and marital status. We promote the employment of people with disabilities, respect the different cultural beliefs of employees, and implement workplace equality.
VNET actively implements gender equality policies to build gender-friendly corporate systems and environments. As a global corporate signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), we will continue to work with global enterprises in improving gender equality practices and unleashing the potential of women.
We have taken continuous practical measures to protect women's rights, launched the "V-Can" Gender Equality Action Plan to encourage all employees to break gender stereotypes in the workplace and help more women become the backbone of the IDC industry.
VNET guarantees the fairness and rationality of employee compensation management without interference from gender or other factors. We are committed to appropriately eliminating the pay gap between female and male employees so that all employees are equally treated in terms of career development, remuneration and promotion.
Employee engagement and communication
VNET encourages a work environment of honesty, openness and constructive communication, and fully protects the rights of employees concerning their information, participation, privacy, expression, and supervision.
We respect employees' right to freedom of association and collective bargaining. VNET has set up bodies such as the Trade Union Committee and the Women Workers’ Committee to supervise employee rights and interests. These bodies actively engage in the formulation of systems closely related to employee interests, and provide suggestions for the management team on how to enhance employee diversity, safeguard occupational health and safety, improve employee welfare, etc. In order to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of employees, Trade Union Committees have signed the collective bargaining documents with enterprises on behalf of employees, such as collective bargaining agreements and special agreements on the protection of female employees.
To enhance communication for employees, VNET has established a formal employee communication and grievance mechanism. With this mechanism, employees are encouraged to communicate and file a grievance with their real name or anonymously through multiple channels such as email and phone hotline. Employees are also permitted to communicate with and lodge complaints to the Trade Union Committee, Human Resource Department, their departmental heads, and cross-departmental leaders, as well as at higher levels beyond the immediate leadership. For any grievance requiring investigation, we will immediately initiate the investigation procedures, report the investigation process and results directly to the management team and the Board of Directors. We encourage employees to file a grievance about any harassment, bullying or unfair treatment they have encountered at work. In the case of disciplinary action, employees are entitled to file an appeal according to law if they believe that the issue has not been resolved or handled properly.
We annually conduct satisfaction surveys among all employees to understand their work status. By analyzing and tracking the survey results, we know more about the work situation of employees, actively adopt reasonable opinions and suggestions, and propose improvement and optimization measures. We conducted 2023 employee satisfaction survey anonymously, covering elements such as Job satisfaction, Purpose, Happiness and Stress. 94% of employees gave the highest score of satisfaction, and the score of employee engagement belonged to a high level.
Occupational health and safety
VNET firmly believes that creating a safe and healthy work environment for employees is a fundamental responsibility of the enterprise. We strictly abide by the Work Safety Law of the People's Republic of China, the Fire Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, as well as other relevant laws, regulations, and standards. The executive management regularly reviews and supervises the implementation of work related to occupational health and safety and the effectiveness of the management system to continuously improve occupational health and safety management capabilities. We have issued the Regulations on Work Safety Management, Fire Safety Management System, and other safety management systems and regulations at the group level, which specify safety management responsibilities, safety goals, inspection standards, as well as requirements for supervision and evaluation. We have also established a risk mitigation action plan based on the risk priority of occupational health and safety. At present, a number of sites in our main business have been certified to the Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (ISO 45001).
We strive to maintain the occupational health and safety of all employees, suppliers and third-party partners. We also aim to abide by applicable occupational health and safety regulations in the places where we operate. We have set a work safety target of achieving zero fatalities rate for engineering construction responsibilities. We also include occupational health and safety performance targets as a part of our salary and bonus evaluations for relevant managers. Meanwhile, we listen to staff's advice on occupational health and safety via the Trade Union Committee to continuously optimize health and safety-related management.
We provide and maintain devices, equipment and work systems for the safety of our employees. Safety drills and fire safety training are organized regularly to reduce the possibility of accidental injuries and enhance employees' safety awareness. VNET attached great importance on the protection against high-risk and high-incidence safety hazards in construction projects and developed the first series of safety standardization atlases in a targeted manner to provide visual and operable safety standards for each project. In addition, we developed different safeguard measures and emergency response plans based on the seasonal and geographical characteristics of the construction projects to manage project safety issues in a targeted manner.
We also value the occupational health and safety of the employees of contractors employed in construction projects. We sign Work Safety Agreements and Construction Safety Liability Agreements with contractors and require subcontractors to follow VNET's work safety management practice to ensure the safety of personnel, equipment and operations and avoid accidents and incidents, as well as to prevent regulation violations and safety agreement breaches. In 2023, VNET conducted work safety-related education and training for all employees and contractors' employees, with the work safety training coverage of 100%.
We have established safety and emergency response mechanisms, and taken measures in terms of organization, management, treatment and preventive control. Once safety incidents such as work-related injuries happen, we initiate the investigation procedure immediately to find the causes of such incidents. At the same time, we suggest improvements to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.
VNET has a dedicated team responsible for conducting unannounced inspections and patrol inspections of construction projects as well as supervising and checking the safety responsibility goals set at the beginning of construction. We engage third-party agencies to inspect construction projects for quality defects and potential safety hazards from a professional, objective and impartial perspective, issue early warnings and carry out rectification to eliminate potential risks. If problems are identified during unannounced inspections and patrol inspections, we will follow the cyclic quality management process for resolution, which involves: inspecting the system and standards of the project, identifying deviations and degree between the system and actual conditions, proposing corrective measures for timely rectification, reinspecting to review the status of corrective actions. In 2023, VNET achieved the work safety target of zero fatalities rate for engineering construction responsibilities.
To enhance the corporate culture of occupational health and safety, we continuously carry out health and safety-themed activities for our employees to enhance their health and safety awareness, as well as their workplace stress management abilities. For our employees' mental health, we set up a psychological consultation room in the office area to provide professional psychological counseling for employees. For our employees' physical health, we provide automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) in the office area and organize first aid training and health knowledge lectures. In addition, we have launched the Health Room project to provide employees with free services such as traditional Chinese medicine consultations and massage therapy.
Welfare and care
VNET has created a robust welfare system. In addition to social insurance and welfare prescribed by national and regional regulations, we provide all employees with six categories of supplemental benefits, including exclusive benefits, anniversary benefits, employee care benefits, health and safety benefits, recreational benefits, as well as special holiday benefits.
Considering the childcare needs of employees, we strictly follow policies on parental leave, offer flexible work schedules for breastfeeding employees, and set up a private and convenient breastfeeding place in the office area.
We provide comprehensive support for employees and provide assistance and subsidies for employees who encounter emergencies or experience sudden misfortune, offering them warmth when they need it most. In 2023, VNET's Trade Union Committee distributed a total of RMB 40,000 of living subsidies to employees with severe illness and employees in need.
VNET organizes a variety of cultural and sports activities for employees. We are committed to providing fulfilling and meaningful spare-time activities for employees, enhancing their physical health, promoting teamwork, effectively relieving workplace stress, and enhancing employee job satisfaction.
Talent Development Platform
We hope that every employee can demonstrate their value at VNET and enjoy adequate and equal opportunities for professional development. We integrate the human resources system with the cadre management system, actively understand and satisfy the development needs of the Group and continuously practice a sustainable talent development strategy.
Nurturing talent
VNET has established a multi-level and systematic employee training system. We provide targeted training for our employees at different development stages according to the Employee Training Management System. In order to serve the talent training needs of all business lines and achieve knowledge co-creation and sharing, we have built the “VNET E-Learning” platform to achieve digital talent training. The platform focuses on nurturing leadership, profession and general capabilities, and integrating resources to tailor learning maps for each employee. Currently, a total of 545 premium courses have been released on the “VNET E-Learning” platform.
We regularly conduct featured training programs for different positions to enhance their comprehensive abilities and professional skills.
To help cultivate managerial talents, we constructed multi-leveled comprehensive succession and development plans. We also set up three training modules for our executives, middle-level managers, and junior managers with "Customized Training Program for Senior Executive", "Cadre Reserve Candidate Program", and "Management Trainee Development Program".
We use a formal talent pipeline development strategy to train young talents with potentials. We have introduced the Management Trainee Development Program, organized diverse training practices and competitions and strengthened school-enterprise cooperation to inject fresh blood into the Group's talent pool. In 2023, VNET established a school-enterprise cooperation mechanism called an "oriented class" with 6 institutions and signed cooperation agreements with 5 institutions for jointly internship bases, providing over 160 students with internship positions.
For O&M engineers, the backbone of VNET, the Group started the Honor O&M Expert Program series in 2017. The program includes technology competitions, training camps, and other modules to promote technical exchanges among employees and enhance their professional skills. The program has attracted approximately 6,500 participants and selected over 120 outstanding O&M engineers.
We use mentorship as a bridge to connect employees and mentors in the Management Trainee Development Program and O&M series training to help employees gain more opportunities and support. Moreover, to further enhance the capabilities of employees, we actively partner with external educational institutions to develop or provide relevant training courses. VNET encourages employees to leverage external professional resources to improve their expertise and provides support for all employees by reimbursing their expenses for pursuing professional certifications.
Development and incentive program
VNET has established a comprehensive rank structure and promotion mechanism to ensure equal opportunities for all employees. We have also formulated and released the VNET Position & Rank Management Procedure, providing employees with four career development paths: management, sales, technician, and special talent. Employees can choose their paths according to their career plans.
We value the long-term performance of our employees and manage their promotions from multiple perspectives based on five basic principles: organizational development needs, ability, performance, value orientation, fairness and equality. For vacant positions, we encourage internal recommendations or self-recommendations. Candidates are also granted internal transfer opportunities through competitions and evaluation processes.
We have established a multi-level strategic performance management system, with which we conduct performance appraisals every year for employees through methods such as management by objectives, multidimensional performance appraisal and agile conversations to ensure the objectives of each level are achieved.
Management by objectives: The Group organizes all levels to break down objectives based on the annual strategy and goals and sets personal business objectives on this basis.
Team-based performance appraisal: The performance of teams is evaluated by all levels based on the fulfillment of the team's performance objectives and collaboration with other teams. Performance appraisals of team members include both the team's performance appraisal results as well as the individual's working competencies and business performance.
Multidimensional performance appraisal: Using professional tool to conduct 360-degree feedback while considering the fulfillment of the team's performance objectives, as well as evaluations by superiors, colleagues and subordinates, as well as self-evaluations to guarantee scientific, objective and fair evaluations.
Agile conversations: We carry out instant communication with employees in daily work through various channels such as email, i-Vnet, Feishu and the employee forum.
We offer all employees performance-based bonuses and instant incentives, and ensure performance appraisal results are clearly and transparently communicated to each employee. If employees have objections to the performance appraisal results, they can file a written grievance to the Human Resources Center. After receiving the grievance, the relevant departments will verify the content related to the grievance, conduct performance appraisal re-checks, and inform the complainant about the appeal results within the corresponding time limit.
