Workplace reviews and discussion: 暐世生物科技股份有限公司

(1) Good relationships among colleagues; everyone is willing to answer questions and help each other.

(2) The OA partition panels in the office are tall—probably 130–140 cm—providing relatively good privacy.

(3) There is a pantry outside the office with a coffee machine, microwave, refrigerator, and RO reverse-osmosis water dispenser (hot, warm, and cold water). The cabinets contain tea bags, coffee beans, snacks, and more.

(4) The company provides catered lunches (meals are eaten in the conference room on the fifth floor, which has many tables and chairs; employees must bring their own utensils). Each meal costs NT$35, deducted from the monthly salary. (The monthly salary includes a tax-exempt meal allowance of NT$1,800 per month.)

(1) The company operates under a responsibility-based work system. Overtime must be applied for in advance and can only be worked after approval. Overtime can only be exchanged for compensatory leave; no overtime pay is provided. (Unless the overtime request is approved by a senior supervisor or the owner, it is treated as responsibility-based work, with neither overtime pay nor compensatory leave.)

(2) The company computers are very slow. Many of the desktops were purchased between 2012 and 2015, and the monitors are 19 inches. (The computers are outdated, and the small screens make them inconvenient to use.)

(3) The executive assistant checks the CCTV every day, whether in the office or other floors and factory areas. When looking for an employee, the assistant checks the camera footage to see whether the employee is at their seat. If they are, the assistant calls their extension; if not, the assistant contacts them via LINE on their mobile phone. (Employees are asked to join the company’s LINE group within just a few days of starting.)

(4) Sometimes, near the end of the workday and before employees have left their seats, the executive assistant asks someone to come to the office for a meeting after checking the CCTV to see whether they are at their seat. This results in “overtime meetings,” but no overtime pay or compensatory leave is provided, delaying employees’ departure.

(5) Employees may be required to travel overseas for trade shows before they have been with the company for one month. (Employees are sent abroad to exhibit almost immediately, even though they are not yet familiar with the company’s products.)

During my time there, I saw seven office employees leave, including two or three who were laid off. There were approximately 30 employees with more than five years of tenure (mostly in the office, with many long-serving employees), and approximately 20 employees with less than one year of tenure. Employees leave the company every month or two.

The company’s turnover rate is very high, but the highest-level management does not seem to care and does not appear to consider employees important assets of the company.

The company has three main business areas: medical devices, skincare products, and health foods (currently in preparation).

Each business area is further divided into contract manufacturing (OEM/ODM) and own-brand business (OBM).

The general manager oversees the medical-device business and a very small portion of the skincare business, while the executive assistant (the general manager’s wife) oversees most of the remaining skincare business.

The company has no product-development specialists or product managers. I also searched the internal NAS server for folders related to departments and products but found no market research, research, or analysis reports or documents. The company’s own-brand products give the impression that when a contract-manufacturing client has a product that performs well—because its ingredients and proportions work effectively, or because the product sells well on the client’s side—the company makes minor changes to the formula, tests it internally, and then mass-produces and sells it if colleagues’ and employees’ user feedback is acceptable. (It is unclear whether employees may be constrained internally and therefore reluctant to express their true opinions.)

In today’s era of smartphones and mobile internet, the internet is highly developed. It is no longer possible to rely on sales methods from before 2010. The company must transform or diversify its operations. However, the general manager and executive assistant believe that contract-manufacturing sales methods, or sales methods from 10 or 20 years ago, can still be applied to own-brand products and used in today’s market. The company is truly stagnant and set in its ways.

The executive assistant is unwilling to understand proposals or what equivalent value and returns they could generate. Proposals are judged only by their upper half; if that part seems unsatisfactory, they are immediately opposed and rejected—a decontextualized interpretation. The assistant believes that proposals without clearly defined returns are unacceptable. (People who understand marketing know that the return from marketing and advertising can only be estimated during proposal planning; the actual return can only be analyzed and calculated after the project is completed.)

Using her authority as the head of the skincare business, the assistant does whatever she wants. Suggestions from employees, including recommendations submitted by customers encountered at trade shows, are treated as if they went in one ear and out the other.

After seeing a business partner sell products successfully through influencer livestreams, the assistant also wanted the company to find influencers to livestream and sell products, so employees were told to look for influencers. However, the assistant never considered that not just any influencer will be able to sell products successfully through livestreaming, nor did she consider whether the product category is suitable for livestream sales.

Conclusion: The company wants to transform or diversify into own-brand operations. The general manager and executive assistant see surface-level trends such as influencer word-of-mouth and social-media marketing and then expect employees to implement them, yet they are unwilling to listen to proposals and advice from subordinate employees. At the same time, they give misguided instructions and dictate how employees should do things. They truly lack professional expertise but love to pretend they understand it.

This company is only suitable for people who flatter others and know how to curry favor. Anyone who wants to build experience and showcase their abilities should skip this company!!

There is truly no end to the problems at this company, and much more could be said...... This company is truly a case of “When the generals are incompetent, the entire army suffers”!!!