One of South Africa’s largest banks, Absa, has planned more retrenchments, Business Day reported on Thursday.
Louis von Zeuner, CE of Absa’s retail bank, told the newspaper that the retrenchments should not amount to more than 400 people.
This was the second and final phase of a ”streamlining” process at the bank that had looked at head office and regional head office.
Customer-facing staff and branches would not be affected, but units across retail banking, secured lending, unsecured lending and support services ”would have their head counts thinned”, Business Day reported.
Just two months ago Absa said it would lay off 100 senior staff and that it would have to consider more retrenchments if the economic environment worsened.
Von Zeuner said Absa would redeploy staff wherever possible — potentially into the debt-collection and counselling areas of the bank. Employees who were not successful in being placed could apply for other positions during the reassignment process.
Absa wanted to finalise the process by the first week next month, the newspaper reported. — Sapa