Why ICICI Bank wants to turn a new leaf: A peep inside the bank's new work culture

[alok agarwal]

 

For some, it's a day to say grace. For some, it's a day of rest. For Parvez Mulla, Sundays had come to mean a grace period: a day to finish office stuff pending from the working week. Office was ICICI Bank. Work was leading sales—of home loans, life insurance policies and credit cards—for the Mumbai region. And Sundays a day to balance the workbooks, a natural corollary of which was work-home imbalance for Mulla and ICICI staffers shaping those numbers.

So, for example, if Friday had been a bank holiday, Mulla would use Sundays to complete paperwork. Or, if he felt a sales team wasn't pulling its weight, Mulla would get them on a call on Sundays. That was then, till 2010. Now, in 2013, to summon colleagues to work Sundays, Mulla would need his director's permission. The system, by its very construct, tells Mulla not to work Sundays, or ask others to do so.

That redefinition of Sundays, of holidays, of after-hours in the lexicon of ICICI BankBSE -0.26 % is symbolic of the course correction the bank—that has grown to become India's second largest by assets in just 19 years—is looking to make: from a ruthless meritocracy to a sensitive one. At the centre of this change are its 65,000 employees—equally praised for being at the frontline of change in Indian banking and pilloried for their unbridled aggression— and their engagement with their employer. After a lifetime of goading them on to pursue growth, the bank's management wants them to tone it down, and is rewriting its HR policies: lesser emphasis on variable pay (and, therefore, on numerical targets), slower promotions, a better work-life balance, a longer rope to freshers, lesser discretionary powers to line managers and business heads..."The aim is to nurture a culture of caring and supportive meritocracy for our employees," says Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO.

K Ramkumar, the head of human resources, is her man on the ground. He describes in evolutionary terms the culture change the bank is seeking. "The aggressive, star culture worked when we were a 1,500-people organisation," he says. "We are now one lakh-plus employees (in the group). We have been renegotiating this (the culture)."

All this renegotiation trickles down to staffers like Mulla, who joined the bank in 2000, and sped through four promotions in eight years. But, for the last three years, with the new HR philosophy being seeded into ICICI, Mulla has been in the same role. "One can argue both ways if a softening of culture affects productivity," he says. "I look at my current role through a three- to five-year lens, not a one-year lens. It gives you the flexibility to take long-term decisions while discouraging quick-fix thinking."

It's a change that aims to walk the fine line between shedding excesses without compromising on growth or excellence, between reining in employee aggression without killing their drive or aspirations.

"Communicating the change is the biggest challenge for such large organisations," says Kavil Ramachandran, a professor at the Indian School of Business. "A change from a dormant to an active culture is easier than moving from aggressive to moderate."

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