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"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" August 18th (Reporter Huang Xinyi Special Correspondent Chen Junqing) In a letter to all employees released by Xiaohongshu, three organizational structure adjustments were announced internally. The first was that the R grade would no longer be set up, the second was to simplify the management hierarchy, and the third was that leaders at all levels would be appointed.

Xiaohongshu's structural adjustment this time is an organizational selection change, the purpose of which is to flatten the corporate organization, release the vitality of the front line, and eliminate the "seniority-based" situation.

Wei Haozheng, founder of the Seam China Research Institute, analyzed to the reporter of "Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" that there are usually two reasons for the adjustment of organizational structure. The first is new changes in the company's strategy; the other is dissatisfaction with the existing organizational conditions and capabilities.

Wei Haozheng believes that as the development time of enterprises increases, the phenomenon of "entropy increase" will appear, which will lead to lack of vitality in the enterprise organization, lack of agility in market response, and even bureaucracy. The adjustment plan implemented by Xiaohongshu is to break the "entropy increase" and "reduce entropy".

The three organizational structure adjustments of Xiaohongshu have clearly broken down the organizational hierarchy. “It not only allows capable employees to be promoted, but also screens out employees who have a negative impact on organizational performance and agility.”

Wei Haozheng also believes thatIn addition to simplifying its management level and building an agile organization, Xiaohongshu also helps reduce costs and increase efficiency."Too many management levels will lead to inefficient decision-making on the one hand, and suppress internal subjective initiative on the other hand. It will also increase the "management tax" and become a burden and cost for the organization. Breaking down multiple levels can play an optimization role."

In Wei Haozheng's view, Xiaohongshu's new organizational structure after the reform is different from the function-centered concept of traditional Internet companies.More emphasis is placed on business-centricity.

Previously, Xiaohongshu's employee levels were mainly divided into specialists, supervisors, managers, and directors. It also introduced two job level systems: R and L. R is a professional job level within Xiaohongshu, which is used to evaluate employees' abilities and contributions in their professional fields, and L is a management job level within Xiaohongshu.

The above system has been benchmarked against Alibaba's P series and Baidu's TPU series in the past, and is an important reference coordinate for Xiaohongshu's job hierarchy.

In the R-level system, levels are usually divided from low to high, divided into R1-R8. Generally speaking, the R5 level usually represents key employees. Xiaohongshu allows employees above R6 to concurrently serve as L0, which corresponds to the role of group leader or team leader. R7 and above may represent department heads or higher-level managers.

From R1-R8, L1 to L4, too many levels will lead to layer-by-layer loss in the process of information transmission, and reporting between multiple levels will also lead to inefficiency. In addition, for employees at R6 and above who hold L0 positions, in addition to professional capabilities, they also need to have management and teamwork capabilities, which requires high personal capabilities.

Especially for employees who do not have outstanding management skills, the "professional + management" model will undoubtedly limit their work efficiency in their professional fields. Xiaohongshu also explained in an email: "The job level system is more likely to lead to seniority-based promotion rather than faster discovery of front-line talents, and it does not best implement the organizational concept of 'giving self-drive a battlefield and rewarding success'."

In early August, Xiaohongshu founders Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang also pointed out in their 11th anniversary letter that Xiaohongshu suffers from the "big company" problem. For example,Some management staff will simply pass on tasks to front-line employees; some leaders will ignore user experience and focus on the intentions of upper management.

The internal letter also said: "These phenomena make me deeply feel the pain of Xiaohongshu's front-line colleagues. They often have no energy to use, and see opportunities slip away. They also feel the bloat and entropy increase brought about by the complexity of the business and the growth of the organization."

Looking at it from today's perspective, the simplification of management and the abolition of the R grade are precisely intended to eliminate the problems mentioned by Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang.

According to an insider close to Xiaohongshu, the new mechanism focuses more on quickly discovering outstanding talents, more flexibly matching business development, stimulating front-line vitality, and making outstanding front-line employees more visible. The new system aims to implement the organizational concept of "giving self-drive a battlefield and giving success rewards" to better match Xiaohongshu's current business development. Recently, Xiaohongshu has also promoted a group of new leaders. Another source said,After this adjustment, Xiaohongshu promoted a large number of front-line managers internally.

In fact, before this round of organizational structure adjustments, Xiaohongshu had also launched a series of structural adjustments and organizational changes.

From the beginning of 2022, Xiaohongshu merged the original community department and e-commerce department into a new community department to improve operational efficiency. From 2023 to 2024, Xiaohongshu made several structural adjustments. It promoted the live broadcast business to an independent department to unify the management of live broadcast content and live broadcast e-commerce. Subsequently, it integrated the live broadcast business and e-commerce business to form a new transaction department to accelerate the integration of content and e-commerce and increase the weight of e-commerce business.

In terms of personnel structure adjustment, Xiaohongshu started a new round of layoffs in July this year.Involving several core departments such as the e-commerce product department, commercialization department and community technology department, Xiaohongshu responded that the layoff rate was less than 10%.

A series of adjustments involve all aspects of Xiaohongshu's operations, and are also its continuous thinking and adjustments in the company's development process. Overall, Xiaohongshu is working hard to improve its operating efficiency and business integration. Whether it can be reflected in the business level and achieve rapid growth in performance is worth continued attention.