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On the evening of August 19, Pufa Bank released its 2024 interim report, and the changes in its employees over the past six months were also revealed.

With an asset size of over 9 trillion yuan and 60,000 employees, Pudong Development Bank is one of the largest joint-stock banks. Therefore, changes in Pudong Development Bank's employees have also attracted much attention.

Data shows that the number of employees of Pufa Bank dropped from 60,706 at the beginning of the year to 59,043 in the middle of the year, with 1,663 layoffs in half a year. The overall layoff rate is about 2.7%.

Compared with peers, this layoff ratio is not high.

But what is puzzling is that despite the decline in employee numbers, employee expenses have not decreased significantly.

At the end of June 2023, the number of employees was 60,632 (basically the same as 60,706 at the end of 2023, which shows that there were no layoffs in the second half of last year, but layoffs started in the first half of this year), and employee expenses were 13.729 billion yuan; at the end of June 2024, the number of employees was 59,043, and employee expenses were 13.640 billion yuan.

Therefore, it can be concluded that despite laying off more than 1,600 employees, there has been no significant change in Pufa Bank's employee expenses.

Such data shows that Pufa Bank employees have not suffered from "layoffs" and "salary cuts" like some other banks. Judging from the "employee expenses" item in the financial report alone, Pufa Bank has not cut salaries. In fact, the per capita employee expenses may have increased.

But on the other hand, the market is also puzzled. If the layoffs are not to reduce costs, then why do they want to lay off employees? Under the current situation of high overall employment pressure, if layoffs are just for the sake of layoffs, it would be better to solve more employment problems for the society.

Of course, this is just an analysis from the perspective of a single financial report data. If Pufa Bank's new coach Zhang Weizhong wants to play a bigger game, that would be another matter.

Pufa Bank laid off a total of 1,663 employees in the first half of the year, but the structure is also worthy of attention.

The House of Finance and Economics noted that the proportion of layoffs at Pudong Development Bank is closely related to the level of educational level.

In its financial report, SPDB divides its employees into three categories: master's and doctoral students, undergraduate students, and junior college and technical secondary school students. By the end of 2023, SPDB had 14,112 master's and doctoral students, 39,020 undergraduate students, and 7,574 junior college and technical secondary school students.

If we ignore the natural internal changes in employees' educational level, judging from the layoff results, 240 people with masters and doctoral degrees were laid off, accounting for 1.7%; 769 people with bachelor's degrees were laid off, accounting for 2%; and 654 people with junior college or technical secondary school degrees were laid off, accounting for 8.6%.

This shows that the layoff rate of junior college graduates is five times that of those with master's and doctoral degrees. The 654 layoffs of junior college graduates account for 40% of the total layoffs of 1,663 people.

From another perspective, SPDB divides its employees into practitioners and outsourced service personnel. At the end of 2023, SPDB will have 60,706 employees, of which 57,017 are practitioners and 3,689 are outsourced service personnel.

In terms of layoffs, 1,088 employees were laid off, accounting for 1.9%, while 575 outsourced employees were laid off, accounting for 16%. The proportion of outsourced employees is 8.4 times that of employees.

From a reasonable perspective, it is very likely that there is a large overlap between the 575 outsourced workers who were laid off and the 654 college and technical school employees who were laid off.

Therefore, the focus of Pufa Bank's layoffs can be attributed to "low-educated outsourced personnel."

This is certainly reasonable to a certain extent, but after all, Pufa Bank is the home of these "low-educated outsourced personnel". Pushing them into society will more or less have negative effects.

The House of Finance and Economics noted that since the new leadership of Pudong Development Bank took office in September last year, the company's strategy has undergone subtle changes. Among them, the previous expression "a warm home where employees share the fruits of development" has disappeared from the company's strategic expression.

In the 2023 interim financial report, the company's development strategy is described as "promoting Shanghai Pudong Development Bank to become a preferred bank trusted by customers, a high-quality blue chip in the capital market, a warm home for employees to share the fruits of development, a systemically important bank that is compliant, stable and reassuring under supervision, and an excellent corporate citizen that is respected and trusted, and strives to achieve the unity of corporate value and social value."

In the 2024 interim report, the key word of the company's strategy is "digitalization", including "five tracks", "five systems", "four strategies", "three guarantees", and the "second growth curve".

The strategic statements toward employees, the capital market, and society are not as warm as before.

At the 2023 performance briefing, Zhang Weizhong also focused on the "digitalization" strategic transformation in his first appearance. He said that the strategic transformation direction of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank was decided after careful research and judgment. "2023 is an important year for the development of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. This year, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank celebrates its 30th anniversary, and we have begun to think about the next development direction of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank." Zhang Weizhong said that after months of research and analysis, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank finally established this transformation direction.

But no matter how the transformation takes place, employees are the company's most valuable asset.

Those who share the same desire will win. The industry is waiting to see how the new coach Zhang Weizhong will lead Pudong Development Bank, which has lagged behind in performance, to make a comeback.