The staff count at Equity Bank Kenya has dropped for the first time in at least four years, with the lender recording a net exit of 415 employees in the year ended December 2023 when new hires were surpassed by those who quit.
This left the bank, the largest subsidiary of Equity Group, with 7,763 employees at the end of the review period from 8,178 the year before.
Figures from the bank’s latest sustainability report indicate that the rate of staff exits at the Kenyan unit last year outpaced that of fresh hirings even though the latter more than tripled to 1,213 up from 375 in 2022.
According to the report, the Nairobi-headquartered business recorded the lowest staff retention rate at 81 percent compared to all the other five regional subsidiaries that the lender operates in the region, with the highest being South Sudan at 93 percent retention rate.
A total of 1,628 workers left the Kenyan firm in the year, which was the highest across all units followed by Uganda at 186, Tanzania (92), Rwanda (83) and South Sudan (11). The exits were mitigated by new hires.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was the only market to register a growth in the workforce from business expansion and which was further augmented by new hiring of 480 employees.
Kenya recorded the fastest pace in new hirings at 1,213, followed by DRC at 480, Uganda (257), Rwanda (166), Tanzania (129) and South Sudan (6), bringing the total number of fresh jobs by the group during the year to 2,251 against a total exit of 2,000 in the five markets excluding DRC.
On gender splits, Ugandan and Tanzanian subsidiaries had the most balanced outlooks, both having 51 percent male and 49 female compositions.
Kenya, on the other hand, had a 54 percent male workforce against 46 percent female staffers while South Sudan had the worst imbalance at 69 percent male domination against 31 percent female formation.
The group’s overall employee payroll indicates that 41.3 percent of permanent staff are women, a marginal increase from 41 percent in 2022, while 27 percent of officials at the senior management level are composed of women, up from 25 percent in 2022.
The lender has committed to raising the salaries of women employees in a quest to bridge the difference between the pay of its female and male staffers, noting that the pay gap improved last year where the average pay for men was 25 percent higher than that of women compared to a higher level of 32 percent in 2022 at the group level.
