Country’s largest bank State Bank ofIndia (SBI) has reduced its total employee strength by 10,584
in the six months period after its merger. This is further expected to go down
by 4,876 people by the end of the year closing March 2018, as targeted by the
bank.
The staff
strength has come down to 2,69,219 staff as on September 2017 compared to
2,79,803 as on March 2017.
From April 1
this year, SBI merged with its five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank
leading to a consolidation phase across departments including the staff count. The banking industry
is undergoing a transformational phase with increasing efficiency and
productivity aided by the likes of robots, chatbots, artificial
intelligence and other technologies that are threatening jobs in the
sector.
This, along with the
stress on the balance sheets of banks due to deteriorating loan quality and
more capital provision requirement, has been directly impacting costs of the
banks. The biggest private
sector lender, ICICI Bank, had also reduced its headcount by 1,082 people in the three months
period from July to September this year taking its total staff strength to
83,058 employees as of September 30. On the other hand, its
peer HDFC Bank, country's second largest private bank, added 2,700 employees.
SBI to hire and retire
SBI, which is among
the top 50 banks globally, further expects retirements and redeployment of
staff to improve productivity. Full year retirements in FY18 are expected to be
at 15,460. Hence, the government bank expects the employee count to
further decline by 4,876 staff, as it had targeted in the first quarter of this
fiscal year.
Although, the bank has
also finalised hiring of 2,200 probationary officers in the second half of this
fiscal year. Prashant Kumar, Deputy
Managing Director (Corporate Development Officer) of SBI said, “We have got
employees from our associate banks and hence, we had already said there would
be very less recruitments this year. However, we have recruited 2,200
probationary officers who would be joining us from January 2018. That is the
only recruitment planned so far.”
With the merger, the
public sector bank absorbed about 70,000 employees from Bharatiya Mahila Bank
and its five associate banks — State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, State Bank
of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of
Travancore.
Thereby, during the
first half of the financial year 2017-18, only 798 employees joined the bank
while 11,382 staff retired in the same period. Of these, a total of 3,569
people had opted for VRS or voluntary retirement scheme offered by SBI to all
the eligible employees from the associates.
Redeployment and digitisation help cut costs
SBI’s former
chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya without giving a number, had stated, “I
don’t think we will be doing too many recruitments. On the clerical side, there
will not be any recruitments and on the officers’ side, there will be some
towards the end of the year.”
The bank has also
planned to redeploy about 2000 people from the closing down of administrative
offices and about 8,616 employees from the rationalisation of branches. Of
these 30 percent was to be redeployed to sales functions.
SBI is also finding
the need to rationalise due to digitisation within and outside the bank.The bank has also been
able to cut down its staff expenses by 4 percent in the first half of the
fiscal and by 7 percent in the second quarter itself from July to September
period.
Within that, the
contribution for employees declined by a margin of 35 percent in H1FY18 and by
nearly 40 percent in the second quarter only. Bhattacharya
had also said that employee costs have come down on account of the retirements.
“If you see, in FY16 and FY17 also our employee costs have remained stable.
This trend will continue... to that extent, we will be more or less around this
number.”
Source - Moneycontrol
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