Challenge for banks: Get people to join up, stay

Recently, at the graduation day ceremony in a B-school near Mangalore, some students approached a former senior banker, who is the head of academic council there, for his blessings before starting off on their career in banking. He had this piece of advice for them: “Build loyalty to the organisation you work for.”

When we posed the question of loyalty to another banker, who heads the regional office of a public sector bank in Mangalore, he said: “That is for later. The first challenge is to get people to join the banking sector.”

Citing the example of his bank, he said there were over 900 vacancies for the post of officers. After completion of the selection process, hardly 200 among the short-listed candidates confirmed their willingness to join. And, finally, only 20 per cent actually joined the bank.

Lest we thought the problem was unique to his bank, he hastened to add: “This is not limited to our bank alone. It is an industry problem.”

Not satisfied

Here is another instance: Four people joined a public sector bank in Mangalore city as probationary officers. No sooner had they joined the bank, than they started surfing the Net for better opportunities in other sectors. A banker in the know of this happening, said the new recruits were told about the benefits of a bank job vis-à-vis those in other sectors.

A fresher in an IT company gets a CTC (cost-to-company) compensation of Rs 3 lakh a year. “When we calculated the CTC for a fresher in a public sector bank in a place like Mangalore, it added up to around Rs 5 lakh a year. We considered only monetary gains and other incentives to the fresher, unlike the new-economy IT companies that take into account even the place where the fresher sits while calculating CTC,” the banker said.

Besides, banks also offer accommodation/quarters at some locations.

But these benefits don’t seem to impress many engineers and B-school graduates, for whom a bank job is only a stopgap arrangement. “They join a bank only because they want a job. And before long, quit to join elsewhere,” said a banker in Coimbatore. Bankers feel that management grads and engineers are overqualified for clerical jobs in a bank, yet they apply and get in because they want to be employed somewhere.

A public sector bank official says the trend is almost similar in the officer category too.

“Even if they join as probationary officers, they don’t stick on for long as in the past. They are invariably posted to the credit section and are set responsibilities. The present day youth is not prepared to take on the burden of responsibility. Youngsters feel their package is not commensurate with the hours they toil in the bank.”

Metro focus

There are some who want jobs only in the metros. If employed in banks, they will have to work in villages too. This is a different kind of challenge, said a banker. Often, when candidates join and quit shortly thereafter, the vacancies are never filled.

Secretary of Coimbatore Consumer Cause Kathirmathiyon is of the view that banks should ask for a bond to control this exodus. “Such candidates are denying the opportunity to other aspirants. If they had joined a private company, they would have had to settle their dues if they quit before serving the notice period,” he said.

>revathy.lakshminarasimhan@thehindu.co.in

>vinayak.aj@thehindu.co.in

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