SBI sharpens talent; branch mentoring in spotlight

Largest lender State Bank of India has taken a slew of HR initiatives to help its over 2.3 lakh 

employees evaluate their performance and enhance productivity. That includes assigning targets for frontline staff and designing a career development path.

“Including the frontline, everybody will have targets and we are trying to give them the means to check their performance on a monthly basis,” Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya has said.

She said the bank so far did not have any system in place wherein employees can report their achievements and check their performance as well. “Now, from the system, they would be able to understand how much they have progressed,” she added. The bank, the Chairman said, will link performance to their posting, promotion, extension and cash and non-cash incentives.

It has also laid out a plan to help employees progress in their career. “In career development, how do we develop a person’s career as they go ahead... whether they would specialise in something or in more than one areas? How do we switch them from business function to a platform function?” Bhattacharya said. 

The state-owned lender has also assigned all senior officials up to the rank of deputy general manager (DGM) the job of mentoring four branches. “Right up to the DGM level, each one of us is now mentoring four branches. 

So, per head, we have four branches to mentor. This is a mentoring wherein we not only try to help people <g data-gr-id="32">personally,</g> but help the branch grow,” she said.