The focus is on creating leaders
How do you attract and spot talent? ICICI Bank follows the ‘making talent’ strategy. The bank invests in early identification of young managers who could be groomed to take leadership positions in future. The bank focuses on identifying people with the right attitude and behaviour required to excel at the job.As a strategy, the bank has not limited its sourcing of talent to just a few urban centres but has tapped talent from deep interiors of the country as well.
Given the employment scenario in India where demand for industry-ready talent exceeds supply, the bank believes that organisations need to intervene to scale-up supply. ICICI Bank has therefore adopted a two-pronged strategy as under: Systemic interventions under which the bank has launched several industry academia initiatives – ICICI Manipal Academy, IFBI, ICICI Sales Academy, among others – to provide job-ready talent for itself and the banking sector. In the past, the bank has met up to 70% of its manpower requirements from these initiatives which attract a diverse pool of applicants from various fields thereby ensuring diversity in terms of gender, cultural and social backgrounds. The other strategy is internal interventions under which the bank has set up several role-linked functional academies to provide requisite knowledge and skills to newly acquired and existing talent in the organisation The best way to retain and nurture stars? ICICI Bank believes in giving large responsibilities ahead of time and taking early bets on people. We focus on creating leaders with a wealth of cross-functional experience and exposure to diverse perspectives. This has given us the ability to negotiate leadership differently, thus creating ‘leaders’ rather than just functional heads or domain experts. The bank believes that technical expertise can be developed through training. However, development and exercise of leadership happens experimentally by expanding one’s world-view and building perspectives. This is also reflected in our recruitment philosophy which does not reject applicants for lack of functional experience What kind of a workplace environment do you strive to create? ICICI Bank has its cultural anchors in being meritocratic. It enables business leaders/ supervisors to help people discover their abilities. It believes in grooming and investing in its employees to take up challenging assignments ahead of time. Care for fellow colleagues and customers, treating others with respect, dignity and empathy are hallmarks of the bank’s culture. Constant innovation and challenging the status quo are also key aspects of the bank’s culture.
The bank employees can freely raise and discuss issues concerning themselves with their superiors, or employee relations managers. These individuals act as a sounding board for employees and jointly find appropriate solutions for employee concerns What specific attributes/values do you look for in candidates being interviewed? What skill sets are important when hiring for your company? A large part of the bank’s recruitment happens for the front-line customer facing roles. At these levels, the bank places immense value in identifying people who have strong customer relationship and engagement orientation/skills What’s unique about your appraisal system? The performance scorecard of every employee (based on the balanced scorecard approach), is finalised at the beginning of the financial year. Achievement is shared with employees through monthly scorecards to prevent ‘surprises’ later