While moxibustion robots offer a key advantage in reducing costs and increasing efficiency

The Supreme People's Court's recently issued "Interpretation (II) on Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Labor Dispute Cases" explicitly mandates that companies pay social insurance contributions for all employees in employment relationships, even if the employee voluntarily waives them. This policy completely closes the loopholes that allowed some companies to circumvent social insurance contributions through "flexible employment," directly leading to a significant increase in labor costs.

For example, a typical moxibustion clinic hiring a moxibustion therapist earning 6,000 yuan per month would incur an additional monthly social insurance premium of nearly 1,600 yuan, bringing the cost per employee to approximately 7,600 yuan. For a clinic requiring three technicians working in shifts, monthly labor expenses would exceed 22,000 yuan, an increase of at least 5,000 yuan compared to previous costs, amounting to over 60,000 yuan in additional expenses annually. This represents a significant operating burden for the traditional health and wellness industry, where profit margins typically hover between 10% and 20%.

However, the impact of this policy has extended beyond the healthcare industry to encompass the entire service sector. Industries like catering, beauty salons, and housekeeping also face the challenge of rising labor costs. The policy explicitly requires that social security contribution bases be reported based on actual wages, prohibiting companies from paying below the minimum standard. It also includes flexible employment and temporary workers within the mandatory insurance coverage. In service industries like beauty and wellness, catering, and housekeeping, this increase in fixed costs has directly eroded the meager profit margins of traditional stores.

Even before the new social security regulations were introduced, Zhuhai's "Ai's Little House" moxibustion clinic pioneered a novel solution. The store utilizes a "two moxibustion robots + one employee" operating model, radically transforming the traditional, human-reliant service model. The robots perform standardized moxibustion procedures, while the employees focus on customer reception and follow-up service. This new model has reduced labor costs per store from over 20,000 yuan per month to approximately 8,000 yuan, a cost reduction of 80%. Most importantly, the robot moxibustion therapists eliminate social security payment issues and can operate 24 hours a day, significantly improving the store's service efficiency. In terms of cost structure, although the store requires an initial investment of approximately 100,000 yuan in equipment, based on a moxibustion treatment cost of 15 yuan per session, the monthly fixed equipment maintenance cost only increases by approximately 1,600 yuan, far less than the manpower required to employ three moxibustion technicians.

Driven by new social security regulations, the transformation and upgrading of traditional service industries has become an inevitable trend. The advantages of this "human-machine collaboration" model are clear: it addresses rigid social security expenditures, reduces staff turnover, and improves service stability. The high degree of standardization of robotic services completely avoids the technical variations that can occur with traditional manual services. Furthermore, when combined with the AI Four Diagnostic Instrument, moxibustion robots can provide personalized customer service, which is difficult to achieve with traditional manual services. Most importantly, this model allows stores to focus more on improving the customer experience and expanding their business, rather than struggling with rising labor costs.

In the future, the human-machine collaboration model of "smart devices + professional services" will become a mainstream development trend in the healthcare service industry. This transformation is not limited to the moxibustion sector; it has broad application potential in multiple market segments, including massage, beauty, and physical therapy. For traditional stores, instead of passively bearing the pain of rising costs, it is better to actively embrace technological innovation, reduce costs and increase efficiency through intelligent transformation, and win new development opportunities in the fierce market competition.