Heaptalk, Jakarta — Singapore’s shopping and rewards company, ShopBack, reduced its employees by about 24%, becoming more focused and self-sustainable.
“Undoubtedly, this decision is one of the most complex ways we have had to make in our company’s history. We will reduce the size of our team by 195 roles to become more focused and self-sustainable as a company. We will issue notifications to ShopBackers, who will leave us within an hour of the end of Town Hall. In some markets, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices,” said ShopBack’s CEO, Henry Chan.
When the digitalization is aggresively promoted due to the pandemic situation in 2021 and early 2022, the economy favored expansion over sustainability. At that time, ShopBack decided to scale up its team from 500 workforces to over 900 ShopBackers. Nevertheless, today’s market sentiments shifted, aggressive growth became the long-term strategy to focus on cost efficiency in Q2 2022. In its effort, ShopBack explored all viable alternatives to reduce costs, spanning:
- Cutting back significantly on salary increments, performance bonuses, and welfare budgets
- Implementing pay freezes and removing performance bonuses for leaders and senior leaders, introducing compensation cuts
- Removing over full-time positions that were hiring for by reducing back-fills and filling only strictly critical roles
- Introducing higher standards for efficiency and cost-effectiveness across the organization
To support the impacted employees during the transition period, ShopBack provides severance packages, including a notice period, healthcare insurance until June 30th, 2024, a month of severance pay for every full year of the employee’s service, a commission payment equivalent to a month’s salary, leave encashment, learning development, carrier transition support, and immigration support.
Founded in 2014, ShopBack has generated over US$4 billion annual sales for over 20,000 online and in-store partners. ShopBack continues to provide value to members and merchants through its innovative offerings, facilitating upwards of half a million daily transactions. The Group has served over 40 million shoppers across 11 markets. In 2023, the Group expanded its offerings into Germany.
In 2022, ShopBack landed US$30 million in equity via a strategic investment from Westpac Banking Corporation. The raise follows the Group’s earlier announcement of its US$160 million Series F tranche from Asia Partners and 65 Equity Partners, with commitments from other new and existing investors, bringing the final close of its Series F round to US$200 million.
