BEIJING, November 22  (TMTPOST)— China’s second largest e-commerce company JD.com takes high-profile steps to improve employee benefits.

Source: Visual China

In order to improve benefits of grassroots employees and mitigate pressure on the company, JD.com decided to cut compensations of management, more than 2,000 senior managers, by a range of 10% to 20% from January, 1st, 2023, and those with higher position will face greater pay cuts, according to JD founder Liu Qiangdong’s open letter released on Tuesday. Beijing-based JD will also spend RMB10 billion to create a housing security fund for all the grassroots staff, including those from Deppon Logistics Co., Ltd, a logistics unit it recently acquired. Liu hopes the fund that offers interest-free loan can help employees such as delivery drivers or custom service providers buy their family houses. The spending suggests JD will cumulatively invest tens of billions of yuan in the next decade.  

In the letter in forms of email sent to the whole employee, Liu apologized to the senior management for pay cuts and pledged to restore compensations at any time if his company backs to the state of fast growth in the coming two years. Moreover, the billionaire said he is going to donate RMB100 million and JD as well as each business group would allocate a certain proportion of funds to significantly expand the Relief Fund for Employee Children, so as to support to raise children of any staff who loses life or working capacity either for work-related or non-work-related injuries up to their 22 years of age, namely until they graduate from colleges.

The efforts came as JD posted better-than-expected financial results both the top and bottom line last week. In the quarter ended September 30, its net revenue surged 11.4% year-over-year (YoY) to RMB243.5 billion (US$134.2 billion), and non-GAAP diluted net income per American depositary share (ADS) almost doubled YoY to RMB6.27. What we feel certain and make preparation for is that the worst moment is basically over, and positive news will keep coming in the future, while what we are not sure is that the speed and strength of the future recovery, JD management told analysts on an earnings call. They said it will take some time to see positive impact of economic development on consumption through incoming data, and JD is relatively more confident about overall growth next year.