Year - end bonuses and salary increases. Why are big companies collectively "currying favor" with employees?

As the end of the year approaches, several leading enterprises have successively signaled salary increases and welfare upgrades. Companies such as ByteDance, JD.com, CATL, and BYD have all raised their salary budgets and optimized their year - end bonus structures.

Different from the past, this round of actions is not accompanied by large - scale recruitment expansion, nor is it focused on short - term stimulation. Instead, it tilts more towards "people": ByteDance and JD.com have increased their investment in year - end bonuses and salary adjustment budgets. CATL and BYD have launched a new round of salary increase plans for different employee groups. In addition, some enterprises have directly given gold to employees in addition to regular year - end incentives, and some have extended their attention to longer - term aspects such as housing, employee health, and family insurance. All these signs indicate that large enterprises are attaching more importance to a more stable relationship between employees and the organization.

Against the background where enterprises still generally emphasize efficiency and control costs, this choice is unusual. But this itself is also a signal: in a cycle of continuous uncertainty, enterprises are re - evaluating the value of "people" and regarding them as a core asset that requires long - term management.

Hard - core "Salary Increase"

The changes are not isolated. Within a few weeks, the "salary increase wave" in the technology, e - commerce, and new energy manufacturing fields has gradually materialized.

Manufacturing and new energy enterprises were the first to spread the news of salary adjustments. In early December 2025, netizens reported that CATL sent a salary adjustment notice via internal email, raising the basic salary of employees at levels 1 - 6 by 150 yuan per month. At the same time, the company also launched a reward plan for employees who stay at their posts during the Spring Festival, and eligible employees can receive an additional subsidy of at least 3,200 yuan. This news quickly made it onto the Weibo hot search and was later confirmed by CATL.

Although the basic increase of 150 yuan was criticized by netizens as "too little" for CATL, which "earns over a billion a day", it is also rare for a manufacturing enterprise with a scale of over 130,000 employees and sensitive to costs.

In the same month, the media also confirmed the news of a salary increase for BYD's R & D technicians. It is reported that most of the salary adjustments this time are around 1,000 yuan, some can reach 3,200 yuan, and some are in the range of several hundred yuan.

Meanwhile, Internet companies announced their incentive plans intensively at the year - end. On December 19, ByteDance announced to its global employees that it will continue to increase its investment in talent: in 2025, the investment in bonuses (including performance options) will be increased by 35% compared with the previous period, the investment in salary adjustment will be increased by 1.5 times, and the starting salary and the upper limit of the total salary package for all job levels will be raised simultaneously.

JD.com's year - end bonus in 2025 is also particularly "generous". It is reported that 92% of JD.com's employees across the group received full or even excessive year - end bonuses, and the total investment in year - end bonuses increased by more than 70% year - on - year. In departments that have been upgraded to a 19 - salary system, employees with a performance rating of A+ can get a 22 - salary system. Some business units have already achieved a 20 - salary system in advance, and the average salary for procurement and sales positions has reached 25 salaries with no upper limit.

In addition to regular salaries and bonuses, some enterprises have begun to introduce more symbolic incentive methods. In late December, Dreame Technology announced that in addition to the year - end bonus, it will give an additional 1 gram of gold to all employees, covering about 18,500 employees. A few days later, it launched a "Family Health Protection Plan", insuring employees and their immediate family members for critical illness insurance and cancer prevention insurance, extending the scope of welfare from individual employees to the family level.

Platform enterprises are also increasing their investment in the welfare of front - line workers. On December 12, JD.com announced that it has provided 28,000 sets of "Courier Homes" for front - line employees and plans to invest an additional 22 billion yuan in the next five years to add 150,000 sets of housing. Previously, Meituan also launched "Rider Apartments" with a monthly rent of 700 yuan and free utilities, and said that it will invest 10 billion yuan in the next five years to build a rider protection system.

Although this "welfare competition" occurred at a high point of fierce competition between the two companies, it can benefit the groups of couriers and food delivery riders who have long been in a "protection vacuum", and this move has won a lot of praise.

It is not difficult to find that the way enterprises motivate employees is expanding from a single "salary increase" to a more three - dimensional and comprehensive welfare package.

Investing in the Future

The courage and ability to raise salaries on a large scale is a demonstration of an enterprise's confidence in its operation. JD.com, CATL, BYD, etc. achieved good results in 2025.

The financial reports show that in the third quarter of 2025, CATL achieved a total revenue of 104.2 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 12.9%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 18.55 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 41.2%. JD.com Group's revenue in the third quarter was 299.1 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 14.9%. BYD's revenue in the first three quarters was 566.266 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 12.75%.

But there is also pressure. JD.com Group is facing the situation of "increasing revenue but not increasing profit", and BYD, which has made great efforts in R & D, has experienced a rare single - quarter negative revenue growth in recent years.

At this juncture, the collective salary increase by these giants is obviously not just simple employee welfare. These seemingly different human resource strategies are actually "open cards" played by enterprises at their respective strategic turning points to meet urgent challenges.

In recent years, the global power battery market competition has continued to intensify. Against the background of co - existing pressure of capacity expansion and delivery, what CATL needs is a core labor force to support large - scale production. By increasing the basic salary and rewards at key nodes, it is actually "strengthening the foundation" of the manufacturing system and reducing the implicit costs caused by employee turnover.

BYD has ambitions for intelligentization. After announcing an investment of 100 billion yuan in intelligentization, it has not reduced its R & D investment despite the decline in profits, and the year - end targeted incentives are also a response.

In recent years, the Internet traffic dividend has reached its peak. ByteDance, which is "attacking on all fronts" in fields such as advertising, e - commerce, and large AI models, is alleviating industry challenges by increasing its investment in talent. In the past two years, JD.com's large - scale operations in retail, logistics, and food delivery have also served to improve the supply chain and organizational efficiency by significantly increasing year - end bonuses and strengthening performance differentiation.

Therefore, the salary increase by these giants is actually a "targeted" strategic investment for the future. Although their starting points are different, the common point is that they regard "people" as the most compound - interest investment at present and as part of the competitive barrier.

From Competing in Scale to Competing in Organizational Capability

From a broader perspective, this round of changes in human resource investment also reflects the shift of the focus of enterprise competition.

In the past decade, enterprise expansion often relied on scale and capital investment, and the growth logic was "hire more people, open more stores, and build more production capacity". However, when the market space tends to be saturated, the cost of capital rises, and technological innovation enters a bottleneck period, the traditional scale advantage can no longer continuously create marginal value. At this time, the scarcity of talent and organizational capabilities is magnified.

The global trend also confirms this change. In the past few years, from Silicon Valley AI enterprises to new energy manufacturing giants, and then to domestic Internet platform enterprises, all have increased their investment in core human resources. R & D backbones, technical engineers, front - line operators, etc. have become the talents in high demand.

Not long ago, Great Wall Motors' move to cancel the "alternate five - day and six - day workweek" sparked heated discussions and was regarded as a signal of the ebbing of the involution in the automobile industry. In 2025, the domestic automobile market showed a trend of "high sales volume but low growth". The industry believes that after the industry bids farewell to extensive competition, technological innovation, product quality, and global layout have become the core competitiveness. A five - day workweek is a sign of the industry's return to rationality, which can balance employees' work and life and improve the organizational stability of enterprises.

In response to CATL's salary incentives for front - line employees and BYD's targeted salary increase for R & D personnel, these measures all indicate that enterprises no longer rely solely on "more people, more power", but improve overall execution and collaboration efficiency through refined human capital management and organizational system design.

This shift means that the enterprise evaluation system is undergoing a structural change: traditional indicators such as business scale, financing ability, or market share are being supplemented by more long - term and difficult - to - quantify indicators such as organizational ability, talent moat, and execution stability. In other words, when the boundary of external expansion is limited, the key battlefield of enterprise competition has extended from "competing in the market, capital, and technology" to "competing in organizational ability and talent management".

Then, with the change of the enterprise perspective, the future battlefield of competition will not only be between products and technologies, but also on "people". Perhaps, this also means that this round of salary increase wave is just the beginning.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Sina New Consumption", author: Zhulang. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.