In a move toward dismantling the rigid corporate hierarchy common at many Chinese companies, game developer NetEase is allowing employees to choose their own preferred nicknames.
What if, instead of the excessively formal “Elder Brother Lin,” your colleagues were obliged to address you by a more colorful epithet of your choice — say, “Linsanity”?
Employees at NetEase now have precisely this option.
In a statement Tuesday, the Chinese gaming giant said it had decided to eliminate the hierarchical connotations of terms like “elder brother,” “big sister,” and “boss” — as many people in China’s white-collar professions refer to each other — and instead encourage employees to come up with their own nicknames, which they can “claim” in the company’s internal network from noon Tuesday.
NetEase’s only requirement is that the nicknames be “positive” and easy to remember.
“State-owned enterprises should learn from this,” read the top comment under a related post on microblogging platform Weibo. Other netizens suggested that all companies — whether state-owned or private — consider similar rules.
“I wasn’t fast enough to reserve the name ‘White Chocolate,’ so I chose to call myself ‘White Milk,’” Bai, a NetEase employee whose surname is also the Chinese word for white, told Sixth Tone. “Before, we would address people at the same level by their full names, and use ‘boss’ or ‘teacher’ for people at a higher level.”
Guo, another NetEase employee, said the nickname policy will encourage a friendlier working environment. “It may be hard for some of our senior employees to change how they address people,” Guo told Sixth Tone. “But this seems helpful for (creating) a better internal culture.”
On Weibo, however, some took a more cynical view. Continue to read the full article here
– This article originally appeared on Sixth Tone.
