Leaving due to confusion, those who graduated from undergraduate and worked in domestic economics: stayed in the industry due to high salaries | Auntie | High salary
"The customer is very good, but I just inexplicably feel aggrieved. I don't know where this emotion comes from, nor do I know where the future lies." Many times, young people who have joined the domestic service industry have finished their confusion and resigned. This is a situation that household manager Wang Yulan has frequently encountered in the past two years.
Wang Yulan, born in 1988, originally worked as a high school Chinese teacher in Qingdao after graduating from graduate school. In order to buy a house, she resigned and became a monthly sister-in-law. Her monthly income was four times higher than before, but her family and friends did not understand. In order to develop better, she came to Shanghai in 2018 and became a home economics empowerment trainer. In recent years, some property management companies have entered the domestic service industry. In 2021, she joined a new company, Highland Property, and participated in the development of recruitment and training standards for domestic service practitioners in "Star Fortune Life". Nowadays, she is the head of the recruitment and training department of the company, and there are many young people among the more than 100 domestic workers in the company.
In the past two years, Wang Yulan has found that there have been more young people participating in training and entering the domestic service industry, including many college students. However, young people with higher education seem to be more prone to feeling helpless and lost, and "coming and going in a hurry" has become a true portrayal of them. Some people have opened a Xintiandi in their career in the home economics industry, and some people left behind behind to think about the industry: What can we do to attract young people in the home economics industry?
High salary
For recent college graduates, a high-end caregiver with a monthly salary of 20000 yuan is very attractive. The employer's requirements of having a foundation in English, artistic talent, or a background in preschool education make it easier for college students to meet. For this reason, many domestic service companies have been trying to sign contracts with some universities and colleges to provide basic household skills training for graduating college students. But the reality is that college students learn the relevant knowledge of the domestic service industry very quickly before entering it. Once they truly enter the employer's home, very few people can persist in dealing with the specific household chores they have to deal with every day.
"Doing household service requires the accumulation and refinement of life experience. Most of them are not used to it when they first graduate, and they also tend to apply for functional personnel. However, the uniqueness of the household service industry is that doing functional work also requires empathy with frontline workers, and those without frontline experience are difficult to handle it." There are also some college students who have graduated for two or three years and try household work after leaving their original workplace, but often do not work long after considering practical issues such as social security payment and career promotion. "Most undergraduate students who have truly stayed behind to engage in frontline domestic service have encountered economic difficulties. Once these difficulties are resolved, they will look for other professions," said Wang Yulan.
Due to her own experience, Wang Yulan is particularly able to understand the emotions of these young people, but she can't do much because many people say they can't even explain what went wrong. "Children's confusion is usually complex and indescribable," she recalled herself. After graduating from graduate school, she worked as a Chinese language teacher in high school with a monthly salary of over 4000 yuan. She wanted to buy a house but was under a lot of pressure. By chance, she decided to resign after hearing that the prices of postpartum women in Qingdao were basically on par with those in big cities. As a graduate student, she can directly apply for the position of Senior Nursery, and as a master's degree holder in education, she has become a coveted gold medalist in maternity care, with each order costing no less than 15000 yuan. But for Wang Yulan's choice, many people around her are puzzled. Her mother often murmurs in her ear, "I've read for nothing," and her relatives and classmates don't understand why she has to abandon her iron rice bowl.
After transitioning from a frontline domestic worker, Wang Yulan, as a domestic trainer, took a cleaning demonstration class with Xie Feijun
"I figured it out very clearly, what I needed the most at that time was a decent income. Fortunately, her sister-in-law was really popular that month, and she was fully booked all year round, achieving her small goal of buying a house on her own.". Later, she went to Hangzhou to participate in an international maternal and child training program. After completing her studies, she transferred from being a nanny to becoming a home economics trainer and left the front line of home economics. However, even so, it took her family a long time to truly accept her decision to enter the domestic service industry. Looking back, even with a firm goal, the attitudes of those around her have inadvertently added many troubles to her.
space
"As a homeroom aunt, the employer's living environment is my workplace environment, and there are some invisible 'conflicts' among them." Zhao Yue is a' 90s generation 'homeroom nanny who has been working in Shanghai for more than three years and has always regarded' less talk and more action 'as a self-cultivation for the homeroom aunt, whether it is at the employer's home or facing colleagues and aunties. "
Aunties staying at home usually take six days off and one day off. On their days off, they usually go to the collective dormitory of their home service agency to rest and stay. Colleagues and aunts who find out that she is a college student will patiently ask her, "Why do you come to be an aunt with such a high education?" Zhao Yue always answers with "for money.".
This answer is always the same, although it may seem perfunctory, it is indeed true. Before becoming a resident aunt in Shanghai, Zhao Yue had worked many jobs in her hometown of Anhui, but the highest monthly salary did not exceed 5000 yuan. After transitioning to become an aunt, my salary did not fall below 10000 yuan due to my proficiency in Mandarin and proficiency in English.
For the sake of income, Zhao Yue overcame many discomforts. The resident aunt is at the employer's house 24 hours a day, and the living room, study, and other spaces are equipped with cameras, which makes Aries more reserved. She went to Shanghai alone as an aunt and had her own ideas when things happened. But as a stay at home aunt, she often told herself not to be obsessive. "They the final say what to do.". This includes children under the age of 3, their parents, and grandparents who take turns visiting their homes.
In Zhao Yue's daily work, there is a subtle correlation between taking care of the baby's daily life and caring for the mother's psychological feelings. "If a child's needs are clear, then it's even more important to understand the mother's feelings." Zhao Yue remembers that sometimes when a child shows affection towards her, she is at a loss because although it proves that she gets along well with the child, the mother will be unhappy and her tone of voice will change. For example, when it comes to children's eating habits, if the child eats less, the grandmother and grandmother may ask the aunt to feed the child a little more, but when the mother sees feeding, she says it will affect the child's eating habits. For Zhao Yue, it is not easy to manage these trivial matters in moderation. At such times, she admits that she will feel aggrieved and will have the idea of leaving.
opportunity
Compared to the heavy workload of college domestic workers, highly educated entrepreneurs in this industry appear much more relaxed. Home service entrepreneurs who have received higher education seem to be more likely to find personalized development paths compared to ordinary home service company owners. Some of them have made money in niche fields such as foreign-related domestic services and postpartum care services, some have grown and grown through brand franchising, and some have even become online home tutors to harvest traffic.
Xie Demei, who holds a graduate degree in Journalism from Fudan University, is a post-80s homemaker. She started her own business in the home service industry in 2016 because she discovered that her nanny's services were not professional enough after giving birth to her second child. Because she has been working in a university for a long time, she emphasizes "professionalism, process, and institutionalization" in everything she does. However, she found that there is not much difference between the monthly and childcare caregivers she hired after giving birth to her second child and the hourly workers she hired at home. "Her work is not organized, and her parenting knowledge is not enough.". At that time, the country had already lifted the two child policy nationwide. Considering the peak birth rate, she quickly established "9+Maternal and Child", which focused on postpartum services. Based on her own needs after childbirth, she pays special attention to her mother's feelings and established a brand in the industry within less than half a year.
"9+Mothers and Infants" places special emphasis on paying attention to the feelings of mothers, and during the training, there will be standardized actions and language used by postpartum women to deliver food to mothers
Initially, she named the domestic service company "9+", implying that "all postpartum services provided by her family will score above 9 points." In order to achieve this goal, the first service concept she shared with her new mothers was to "serve with a mother's heart.". "This may not sound like a specific standard, but emphasizing the need to provide services to mothers with a sense of care is something that mothers are aware of. One of the most intuitive results is that '9+Mother and Child' is rarely complained about or given negative reviews on various online platforms.".
"We incorporate behavioral norms and service quality into the assessment scope, and aunties with high scores will receive higher salaries. In order to" output "excellent aunties to customers, the company also offers free off the job training for employees for 3-6 months." Our screening standards for parenting sister-in-law are not high, and it is good to graduate from junior high school, but they will receive training like preschool education, covering various talents such as singing, sketching, and playing the piano. "In" 9+", many aunties who graduate from junior high school receive 3-6 months of training earn over 10000 yuan per month.".
Because Xie Demei has started businesses in multiple industries, she inadvertently compares different businesses in interviews. "I always think that entrepreneurship in home economics is an industry that is really up to the market the final say. Many industries rely on relationships to find resources, and others rely on relationships to find good aunts in the home economics industry." Therefore, Xie Demi believes that college students can compete in this field with knowledge and vision, whether they are employed or entrepreneurial.
respect
In mid July this year, 16 departments including the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Education issued the "2023 Home Economics and Agriculture Action Work Plan", which mentioned encouraging standardized and reputable home economics enterprises and training institutions to carry out campus recruitment, providing more employment options for young talents. Encourage college graduates to establish domestic enterprises, and provide one-time entrepreneurship subsidies and social security subsidies according to regulations for those who meet the conditions. But how to retain people in the domestic service industry is not a problem that domestic service enterprises can solve on their own.
Wang Yulan believes that in the current domestic service, customers still believe that they are purchasing the time of their aunties. However, the development direction of the industry should make each auntie a professional and earn recognition and respect through the professionalism demonstrated by the in home service, in order to attract more outstanding talents to enter this industry.
In "9+Maternal and Child", Ms. Mi, who is responsible for training, graduated from Zhejiang Normal University with a major in preschool education. She was originally an English teacher in primary school, but since 2013, she has been working as a first-line homeroom aunt, earning a high salary of 25000 yuan at that time. Five years later, she fully paid to buy a house in her hometown of Jilin, and then self funded her studies at the International Housekeeping Academy in the Philippines and Hong Kong. After returning to Shanghai, she combined theory with practice to design courses and specifically trained parenting mothers who could teach children. In her opinion, although this industry may seem to have high salaries, it is still considered by many as "low-level labor with non-standard operations", especially for college students who work in the front line of home economics without social security or promotion opportunities. "In such an environment, it is difficult for young people to be willing to stay.".
The domestic service industry has also become popular, and now brand domestic service has strict requirements for household service personnel from clothing to etiquette
Fortunately, at brand housekeeping companies such as Jingzhi Life, Haokang Home, and Qingxi Home, frontline employees have already established promotion channels, which has attracted young people willing to start as cleaners. For example, in the Whale Life system, several undergraduate cleaners have recently joined. According to the promotion regulations, after working for a period of time, a janitor can become a "master" with apprenticeship by comprehensive follow-up evaluations and backend data. In a period of time, "big data" will select candidates from many "masters", participate in the company's training, and have the opportunity to become a management personnel specifically responsible for evaluating the professional abilities of domestic helpers and caring about their daily needs, and then be promoted to webmaster, managing different numbers of community sites.
The reporter learned in the interview that currently in the domestic service industry, the highest income is for first-line homemakers and caregivers. However, due to the lack of interaction with colleagues, it is not easy for young people to persist. What other positions are suitable for college students? After gaining frontline experience, they can switch to positions such as teaching teachers, butlers, and operators. In addition, this year, the rise of domestic short videos has led to many domestic brands promoting on short video platforms, and their monthly order volume has been on par with traditional offline channels. This means that there will also be greater demand for domestic short video practitioners, which are jobs that college graduates are willing to try and excel at.
Journalist's Notes
In recent years, many big cities have seen the emergence of highly educated nannies, which has aroused people's attention to the domestic service industry and also led more college students to focus on the domestic service industry.
From the perspective of the self-development of the domestic service industry, industry insiders have always called for attracting high-end talents to enter the industry and changing the current situation of "low service level and low consumer recognition". In the past two years, against the backdrop of difficult employment, it seems that college students have gained more practical foundations in doing household chores. However, in interviews, it was found that there are still very few people who actively choose to engage in household chores.
What is the reason? Zhang Youde, the director of the Social Governance Research Institute at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, who has long been concerned about the domestic service industry, said that there is still a problem with the employment concept - "the public's stereotypical impression of the high and low status of professions makes college students prefer to lose their jobs rather than engage in domestic service.". Indeed, even college students who have already entered the domestic service industry may feel more or less psychological pressure when facing the gaze of those around them.
From the perspective of work itself, college students still face difficulties in adapting to the local environment when it comes to household chores. On the one hand, although a college diploma can be a shining weight for them when applying, their insufficient ability to handle daily household chores also leads to unsustainable service orders; On the other hand, in recent years, the call to encourage college students to enter the domestic service industry has mostly been superficial, and no practical support policies have been introduced. Behind the frequent excessive attention to high income in domestic service, there has been a long-term lack of employment security for this group.
In recent years of interviews with reporters, there have indeed been "talented students" like Wang Yulan who have taken root in the domestic service industry, but the "portrait" is also very clear: they need to earn money through frontline domestic service work at the beginning, and also successfully transition to management positions through their own efforts. To be precise, only college students who have successfully transferred jobs and are engaged in household chores can become regular employees of the company and continue to work for a long time. As Zhang Youde said, "There is a chain of disdain in universities and a chain of disdain in majors. How can there be no chain of disdain in the work stage?"? Perhaps the other side of encouraging college students to enter the domestic service industry is to change the awkward situation of vocational education, open up the development channels for vocational education students, and enable them to have a bright future.
