On 23rd April 2016, Legal Guru Club organized an eight-hour visit to JD to promote in-depth exchange visits, mutual learning and communication between the member enterprises.
Group photo of Legal Guru Club members visiting JD
On 23rd April, members of Legal Guru Club received warm welcome from JD’s staffs. They started talking zealously to each other as soon as they met, like long-lost friends and family.
After a nice chat, Ms. Rain Long, general counsel of JD, Angel Yingjun Wang, the founder of Legal Guru Club, and over 20 club members began the journey in JD’s new headquarter building.
They visited mysterious exhibiting hall named “The Light at the End of Tunnel” and were stunned by its three-dimensional visual effects and highly creative interaction, which is beyond people’s imagination. The exhibiting hall presents JD’s track of development and consists of three parts, including Knowing JD.com, Feeling JD.com and Expecting JD.com. If you haven’t got chances to visit the hall, now you may see it from following pictures.
01 Dazzling greeting LED screen
As the club members stepped into the hall, they saw a huge LED screen covering the wall, which is the largest indoor small pitch shaped LED display system in China. The club members concentrated on listening to the introduction of JD’s three main businesses, talent training and development, enterprises culture and social responsibility as a national enterprise.
02 From a small counter to NASDAQ
The aged objects behind the transparent touch screen, as shown in the picture below, record JD’s more than 20 years’ of development. They have witnessed JD’s journey from a small counter to going public on NASDAQ.
03 Blockbuster of the universe: “fixed star table”
JD’s staffs call the dreamy touch table in the following picture “fixed star table”. It respectively shows JD’s landmark building, ecosystem and big data analysis technique.
04 3D-effect wall for photographing
Visitors can switch pictures on the wall and choose the one they like as background. Then cameras will automatically take photos for them if they pose a V gesture.
05 Smart exhibiting hall: a future with “Ding-dong”
“Ding-dong, I’m home.” Smart voice box starts playing music when hearing this sentence to relieve the masters’ fatigue. Besides, many other smart devices have also hit the shelves on JD.com. Smart life is in a near future.
After the visit, the club members went to the meeting room and enjoyed a feast on thoughts.
Angel Yingjun Wang firstly extended her gratitude to JD for supporting this event and her warm welcome to the present club members, and then she introduced the latest development and this year’s successive arrangements of Legal Guru Club.
- Knowing JD
First of all, Ms. Rain Long, General Counsel of JD gave a warm welcome to the club members for visiting the new office building. She said that she fired three designers to eventually design a cool working environment of internet enterprises that is suitable for young people, which represents JD’s overall style and features and also conforms to JD’s ideas on talent management.
After that, Mr. Wang Guangwei, a management trainee of JD’s legal department, briefly introduced JD group about its three main businesses including e-commerce, finance, and technology. From Wang’s introduction, the club members learnt about JD’s innovation programs like the countryside e-commerce and O2O, JD’s complete layout of finance, JD’s big data value chain and its application scenarios, and JD’s in-house legal framework, which comprises the group legal department and finance legal department. To be specific, in-house legal jobs cover comprehensive business support, intellectual property management, policy research and M&A.
Having a general understanding of JD Group and its in-house legal framework, the club members were then given an introduction from Ms. Rain Long of JD’s 4S ideas on talent management: JDstyle, JDstage, JDspeed, and JDsuccess, which respectively refers to the style of JD, the platform for unlimited development offered by JD to young people, rapid growth that one can experience in JD and huge success that can be achieved in
Ms. Rain Long also shared her understanding about the position of in-house lawyers. She classified enterprises’ legal departments into three categories: the transactional type, the assisting type and the driving type. JD’s in-house legal team has achieved the transition from the transactional one to an assisting one through product hipping, smooth procedures, digitalization of decision-making, and the tacit knowledge explicitation. And now it is undergoing the second shift to the driving type.
- Decoding JD’s talent management
Ms. Rain Long is not only JD’s general counsel but its CHO. JD’s rapid growth and high internationalization is closely attributed to her talent cultivation strategy
As general counsels of enterprises, Legal Guru Club members are partly responsible to enterprises’ team building, talent cultivation and even management decisions. So the present club members asked Ms. Rain Long some questions about “talent cultivation and organization empowerment”.
Victor Liang, Baidu’s general counsel, spoke highly of JD’s talent management performance, and asked Ms. Rain Long to give more introductions of their talent management policies, especially the management of senior executives.
Ms. Rain Long: I think the priority of organizational management is to clarify enterprise culture, by confirming company vision, missions and values, to achieve uniformity of thoughts. When I newly joined JD, I found that most of staffs were vexed for not able to memorize the company values. So we hold more than 40 discussions on company values and eventually finalized the current JD missions and values. Then we organized over 5,000 values training in rotation, which helped every employee to deeply understand and honestly practice.
Besides, talent cultivation is the prerequisite for organizational building and management innovation. JD carried through the talent policy of “training inside and outside”. Internally we adopt Sudoku organization and talent review and succession plan in management. Outwardly, we introduce “Management Trainee Program”, “International Trainee Program” and “Elite Interns Program”, recruiting and cultivating outstanding young people.
In terms of senior executives, I first need them to accept JD’s value of “authenticity”. In addition, company leaders should treat senior executives considerately, generously and equally. Everyone must be treated equally.
Mr. Allen Zhou, general counsel of Schneider Electric China, asked: What is JD’s policy in protecting the intellectual property of obligees?
Ms. Rain Long: JD strictly executes the one-strike-out policy with zero tolerance in supplier management. Once a shop is found to be selling counterfeit goods or other foul plays, it will be closed immediately and even receive punishments from Industrial and Commercial Bureau if it goes too far.
Mr. Xu Yongjian, general counsel of China National Aviation Fuel, asked: some friends of mine mentioned that they are impressed by JD’s fast logistics instead of goods prices. How do you think about this phenomenon?
Ms. Rain Long: JD’s logistics is indeed widely-known as impressive. In the future, consumers will be more willing to pay for the quality of goods and shopping experience. In order to become “JD of the national”, we will insist the following policies:
- Devote to become anon-line-shopping mall;
- Open logistics system to the third party to ensure customers quality shopping experience till the last part and reduce transport workload;
- Insist on taking social responsibilities;
- Contribute more to the society, especially to employment, and help our employee to live a better life;
- Realize the internationalization of JD.
- Pay taxes accordingto laws. Make sure every penny of our earning is after tax.
Ms. Wang Yin, general counsel of 3M China, asked: how to raise the position of in-house legal team inside the company?
Ms. Rain Long: It depends on whether in-house lawyers can influence the company’s decision-making, systematically understand business pain spots and successfully solve problems. Lawyers must get rid of routine work and shift from transactional roles into assisting ones. After spotting problems, legal departments should face them together with business units and find correspondent solutions. The purpose is to shift into a driving type legal department.
In addition to that, Ms. Jiao Jiao, chief of JD’s legal department, also shared her experience and thoughts about the management of legal department. She said: “The priorities of the company are the priorities of its legal department, which should serve core businesses of the company and must take practicable measures.” Members of JD’s legal team, employed externally or cultivated internally, are all highly self –disciplined. Their disposition fit JD’s enterprise culture, missions and values.
Mr. Liu Zhijian, chief of legal department of JD Financial Group: JD attaches much importance to customers’ complaints, so legal department also must put customers at the first place. Instead of easily reclining other departments’ requirements, it should try the best to help solve problems so as to move forward together.
The intense Q&A section lasted over two hours, where the club members all shared their experience of management and talent cultivation. Eventually, the event came to a happy termination.
