Bank employees get big Tet bonuses

With only a few days left until Lunar New Year, many banks have decided to give bonuses to their employees. Due to the sharp increase in business profits in 2017 of many banks, the bonuses for employees this year tend to be more positive.

Van, a credit officer at Orient Commercial Bank (OCB), said that he and his colleagues had just received notice regarding the 2017 bonus on February 8. This year's bonus of his bank is based on the performance evaluation of each branch as well as each employee.

Accordingly, the general level at OCB this year, excellent employees and those belonging to excellent branches are rewarded with about more than 5 months of salary, the lowest is more than a month, and only weak individuals are not rewarded. Van said that with the bonus level just announced, this is the highest level at this bank so far.

Meanwhile, Thu Huong - an employee of VPBank revealed that this year the average bonus at the bank is nearly 4 months (including the 13th month). However, the bank has distributed a part of the bonus on the occasion of New Year, the bonus on the occasion of Lunar New Year will depend on the working position and business results of each unit.

Bac A Bank has just announced the 2018 Lunar New Year bonus for its employees. Accordingly, individuals with excellent performance - A1 will be awarded 4.5 months salary, while A2 and A3 will be awarded 4 months and 3.5 months salary respectively.Employees ranked B will receive a bonus of 2.5 months' salary, and C will receive 1.5 months' salary. Those ranked D will not receive a bonus this Tet.

With Vietcombank, the bank achieved the "biggest" pre-tax profit ever and was among the highest in the system with 11,000 billion VND, so the Tet bonus received attention from the market.

And according to Chairman Nghiem Xuan Thanh, Vietcombank is also a state-owned enterprise, so it can only allocate a maximum of 2-3 months of bonus benefits each year, if it completes the plan.

According to him, the concept of "Tet bonus" is actually that employees get their salary back during the year. He gave Vietcombank as an example, if an employee has a monthly salary of 32 million, they will only receive about 15-16 million VND each month. "The remaining amount is spread out over the quarters, each quarter will be evaluated based on KPI scores and this amount is paid at the end of the year, so people often call it a Tet bonus," Mr. Thanh explained.

He also revealed that at Vietcombank, the income gap between the lowest and highest paid staff can be as high as 60-70%. This year, at Vietcombank, there are branches where staff only receive a one-month bonus, but there are also branches where staff receive 3-5 months' salary or even more.

A few days earlier, the Tet bonus at Techcombank also caused a stir when a leader of this bank revealed that the Lunar New Year bonus for employees is calculated according to a formula, ensuring transparency, and can be from 1 to 7 months' salary.

However, not all bank employees are excited about the Tet bonus this year. Thanh Nam, a credit officer at the Construction Bank (CB), sadly said that talking about Tet bonuses would be a luxury. "We have already prepared ourselves mentally," he confided. And this is also the common mood of many employees at Ocean Bank or Global Petroleum Bank after the incident of a series of leaders being arrested.

The leader of a bank in this category confided that although the business situation this year is still difficult, the bank will try to calculate the Tet bonus to some extent. Because according to him, the Tet bonus must always be in line with the employees' contributions to motivate them to work.