Kika to raise its employees’ salary in Hungary

Napi.hu was informed that Kika has raised its employees’ salary by 12.3% on average; the main reason behind this big step is that the company would like to prevent skilled employees from leaving.

The furniture store raised the salary of its employees – including cashiers, the support stuff, and its middle managers – by gross 15.000 HUF from January 2016. The company decided to pay its employees more to keep them from leaving, because Hungary is currently short on skilled workers. There’s an increased demand for furniture and having employees who have an excellent knowledge of the products and the materials is a must for the company.

Besides raising salaries, Kika also has more employees now (649 people) than in the business year of 2014/2015 (593). The company paid its employees a total 1.76 billion HUF last year, plus 148.87 million HUF in other kind of payments, because some employees work in sales commission.

Kika’s revenue was almost 23.43 billion HUF in the previous business year. The owner of the Kika furniture companies, the West African Steinhoff Internatinal group, has recently bought the majority of the Extreme Digital Ltd shares. Most of the products distributed by Kika will soon be available in Extreme Digital’s webshop as well.

The Hungarian retail companies lack a total of 3-5.000 skilled workers. This could force other companies to raise the salaries of their employees as well. From October 2015, Auchan gave a 10% raise on average, spending 1.2 billion HUF. Salaries in retail have been stagnating for years, but the lack of skilled workers might give the sector a boost.

Cover photo: kika.com

Copy editor: bm

Source: napi.hu