At a time when the Indian IT sector is showing signs of fatigue and massive job cuts, SBI shows how smooth staff integration is possible.
State Bank of India, country's largest bank, is in middle of its biggest staff-restructuring, eyeing to redeploy over 10,000 banking staff.
Usually, such an exercise is either doomed from beginning or marred with numerous protests.
Surprisingly, the SBI has faced no such red flags.
According to a report by news agency IANS, several hundreds of offices would be closed and thousands of staff would be moved in the coming months.
Even the unions that strongly opposed the merger of six banks with SBI and were apprehensive about treatment of incoming staff by the SBI management agree that there is not much of vindictive or arbitrary movement of people till now, making one wonder as to how and why this happened.
This smooth transition comes at a times when the IT sector is witnessing major job cuts.
Talking on the restructuring, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya was quoted as saying to the Economic Times, "While the physics of the merger is over, the chemistry is yet to be completed.”
The integration process came into effect from the first quarter.
Around 70,000 employee (around 40,000 Cass III and IV and around 30,000 officers) were added to SBI's rolls following the merger of SBBJ (State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur), SBM (State Bank of Mysore), SBT (State Bank of Travancore), SBP (State Bank of Patiala) and SBH (State Bank of Hyderabad) and Bharatiya Mahila Bank.
"By and large, the staff redeployment in SBI has been smooth. However, there seems to be complaints of vindictive transfers in Kerala which the management must address satisfactorily," CH Venkatachalam, General Secretary, All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA), told IANS.
SBI, is managing the show without any major protests, as it is constantly consulting the unions while making any changes to the staff.
"The management did not deviate from the transfer policies that were signed between the management and the unions," Sanjeev Kumar Bandlish, General Secretary, All India State Bank of India Staff Federation (AISBISF), told IANS.
"There are set transfer policies for officers and the award staff. We have told the management not to transfer employees on a a large scale," D. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev, President, All India State Bank Officers Federation (AIBOF), told IANS.
Union leaders said the employees were consulted and posting preferences were sought prior to their transfer.
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