The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) committee on capacity building today made exhaustive recommendations after examination of feedback received from the banking industry, inputs from member-experts, academicians and various training/consulting institutions. The ambit of the committee's report is essentially human resource intervention that would be required for improving the efficacy and efficiency of personnel employed at various levels by banks and non-banking financial companies regulated by the Reserve Bank.
The objectives also included evolving an appropriate certification mechanism in the realm of training, where feasible, examining possible incentives for undertaking such certification and covering all stages of hierarchy-from the lowest rung to the Board level executives.
Given the issues of growth and development and the impact of the banking sector and non-banking financial sector to the development of the real economy, the capacity building needs to be accorded priority focus to prepare for the growth trajectory and to broad base our growth, the committee said.
The Committee extensively deliberated on the key aspects of Human Resources Management framework in banks. It recommended HR aspects in general and Talent developments in particular need to be provided consistent focus and commitment, by the Board and top management of banks.
It said, position of chief learning officer may be created in all commercial banks. The official will be responsible for leadership development, collaborative learning across the organization, developing learning pedagogies tailored to the organization, measuring the quantum and quality of learning across the organization through various indicators, develop a learnability index for all personnel (i.e. a measure of the ability to learn of an individual) and apply that as an input into promotability, disseminate knowledge throughout the organization and continuously monitor and augment learning and sharing across the organization.
The Committee said, one of the major bottlenecks banks face is in terms of finding suitable replacement of talent that is necessitated on account of attrition, retirement etc. To tide over this issue, the Committee recommended various solutions like developing an Expert Pool internally and allowing free movement of talent within the organization for creation of a larger workforce of trained personnel. Special recruitments based on job roles and competency could also be considered.
The Committee feels that this issue needs to be examined by banks, particularly by public sector banks. Banks must avoid transfer for the sake of preset norms. Job rotation in banks especially, PSBs, should not be done in a mechanical manner but through a well laid down criteria. Banks should allow specialization up to say level III or IV such that the demands of contemporary banking needs are met. Transfers should focus on critical requirement like leadership across the geography and posts that require high concentration of power. In short, need based transfers may be undertaken.
The Committee further recommended that recognized training institutions, apart from those run or sponsored by RBI, may organise appropriate courses for NBFCs and RRBs more particularly in customer interface areas. Further, Cooperatives have established a number of training institutions across the country. However in terms of latest courseware and training methodology there is scope for improvement. CAB, NIBM, IIBF etc may engage with co-operatives to improve the quality of training in these institutions.
While individual banks may consider putting in place coaching/mentoring processes for entry level employees if required based on their individual requirements and needs, the focus of coaching and mentoring may be mainly on middle and senior management. This could be further supplemented with system like sessions with leaders wherein groups of select employees spend a few hours with leaders/top management.
CAFRAL can administer the mentoring program for CMD/CEOs of banks. It can create a pool of select, top notch, highly regarded Mentors who can be invited to conduct the mentoring programs for CMD/CEOs of banks, it said.
