Barclays Bank Kenya has reassured its employees that they will not be laid off during the lender’s restructuring exercise that will culminate in the bank rebranding to Absa.
According to a news report by the Business Daily, the lender’s employee count stood at 2,128 as at December 2018 following the voluntary exit of 78 employees in 2018 with the bank spending approximately Ksh. 479 million to reimburse the laid off employees.
“While the transition is happening now, we have operated under Absa structure from as early as 2015…we expect it to continue without impacting on our staff count. At this point we don’t expect any changes in the structure that we have,” Anthony Mulisa, the bank’s transition Programme Director is quoted as saying by the Business Daily.
The restructuring exercise is as a result of the UK multinational company reducing its stake to 14.9 per cent in its South African subsidiary Absa, through which it owned the Kenyan bank and others in the continent. This has led to the lenders abandoning the Barclays brand and adopting the Absa brand with Barclays Kenya estimating that all its operations will have changed their name to Absa Group Limited by end of 2019. To this effect the Kenyan bank has set aside Ksh. 240 million to facilitate the restructuring and rebranding exercise.
The Business Daily similarly reports that the bank’s reassurance to employees will however be taken with a pinch of salt especially since the bank’s restructuring is meant to increase the firm’s operational efficiency by cost cutting.
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