New Salary Structure Worries Banks’ Employees
IN a bid to guard against the negative impact of the global economic downturn, Nigerian banks are leveraging Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to restructure their operations with a view to saving cost. The measure ranges from salary cuts to outright downsizing, which, The Guardian learnt, is generating bad blood between staff and management of some of the affected banks.
It was gathered, at the weekend, that in a move to shore up revenue and position itself to measure up to the challenges of the newly introduced uniform end of year financial results, one of the banks, may have cut staff salaries by 20 per cent, a development not well-received by the employees.
But in a telephone chat with The Guardian, yesterday, an official of the bank said he was not authorised to speak on the matter. He, however, explained that the bank had not actually reduced the salaries of its staff.
According to him, the bank had, with effect from the end of March, introduced a new salary structure, which earmarks 80 per cent of the salary as basic, but ties the remaining 20 per cent to individual performance, based on specific (deposit) targets.
“The deposit target is minimal and if one exceeds it, he gets an extra reward. Every bank does it but our bank is introducing it for the first time. That’s why people are complaining,” he said.
It was gathered that the Group Chief Executive of the bank, who visited the Nigerian subsidiary recently, might have read riot act to the bank over its poor outing in the last financial year. The Nigerian arm of the bank is said to be central to the overall successful operation of the Group.
