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State Bank of India (SBI) employees in the Kerala Circle are on a campaign to return incentives declared under the Career Development System (CDS) implemented by the bank from the last financial year.
Called Saksham, the CDS assigned ratings to employees as part of a new appraisal system 'to bring objectivity as well as differentiation in the evaluation of performance.'
BCG PRESCRIPTION
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) advised the country's largest bank on developing the system for its 2.25 lakh employees.
The consultants had identified productivity as a key challenge for the bank and advised 'key result areas' based on which a person would be evaluated for the year.
It proposed five types of grades (instead of marks on 100), AAA, AA, A, B and C in order of excellence. Employees with similar work profile were compared with each other.
State Banks' Staff Union (SBSU), Kerala Circle, which has initiated the #ReturnCDSIncentive campaign, said 'Saksham' was as ill-conceived as it was poorly implemented.
POOR IMPLEMENTATION
The computerised criteria were decided arbitrarily and without any application so that even women staff who had gone on maternity leave were awarded 'AAA' and the incentive credited to their accounts.
This is only one among such examples of the topsy turvy implementation. The staff were evaluated and the computer generated scores assigned to each before being graded, as per the concept document.
Those who scored AAA have been awarded Rs 5,000 as performance incentive. The SBSU has taken exception to the 'cavalier manner' in which the scheme was implemented which had only helped pit one employee against the other.
This is what has, in turn, led to the #ReturnCDSIncentive campaign under which all staff who received the incentive have been asked to take a DD in favour of the State Bank of India payable at Thiruvananthapuram.
These DDs are being handed over to the SBI Circle management here today by A Jayakumar, general Secretary of SBSU.
CLAIMS SUCCESS
According to Mahesh, an SBSU activist, the campaign has been a '100 per cent success' in the Circle. All DDs received were collected this morning to be handed back to the management.
When contacted, an official spokesman of the Local Head Office of SBI said the top leadership of the Kerala Circle was 'not aware' of the development.
It has not received any written note about the said campaign nor has it been otherwise informed about it. It was not able to comment on it merely based on hearsay.
In any case, the subject of the alleged controversy is something that the Circle management is not able to decide by itself. It happens to be a policy decision taken by the central leadership of the bank.
The spokesman also noted that the campaign a purely 'localised' development and had not attracted traction in other states.
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