ICICI Bank's unified 'One Bank, One Team' approach is attracting international recognition; here's why

It’s no surprise then that Mumbai-headquartered ICICI Bank chose to tap into this powerful story and invited Amarnath recently to have a chat with employees. In the fast-changing banking world, there are times when an employee feels overlooked, and wishes to reskill and upgrade. Amarnath’s journey serves as a compelling narrative of the triumph of will, grit, and determination.

In fact, this isn’t the first time that the bank has tapped into the sporting world. To emphasise the importance of teamwork, it invited former Indian hockey team captain Viren Rasquinha about two years ago to discuss how hockey—as it is played now—requires continuous adaptation, adjustment, and on-the-fly strategising. The bottom line of these HR exercises is to help employees excel as a team.

It’s central to MD and CEO Sandeep Bakhshi’s strategy of ‘One Bank, One Team’. Since Bakhshi joined the bank in October 2018, the bank’s HR policies have undergone a significant overhaul. In the process, it has moved away from an individual key performance indicators-driven model to a team-based approach.

It is one of only a few large organisations to have adopted such an approach. But it seems to be finding resonance elsewhere. In fact, the bank was pleasantly surprised this year when it got a call from a small bank in the UK inquiring about its ‘One Bank, One Team’ model. That bank, too, follows the same HR practices.

With four to five years having passed since the system was adopted, it is proving highly effective. “It reinforces the fact that we are on the right track,” says T.K. Srirang, Group Chief Human Resources Officer of ICICI Bank. He took over as Joint Managing Director of ICICI Securities from May this year. “The bank has been growing across segments, indicating that working as a team yields far more value to all of us as an institution,” he says.

At the heart of the new system is the belief that every employee joins the bank to do their best, express themselves, and unleash their potential. The bank sees its role as supporting, enabling, and providing the right platform. As a result, its 141,000 employees do not require constant monitoring or individual targets. That approach has propelled it to the top of BT-Taggd’s The Best Companies to Work For in India list.

Team Targets

The bank is looking to move beyond traditional measures of productivity that originate from the manufacturing world. Effectively serving customers depends on understanding their specific needs and the segment they belong to. Financial services deal with unique customers, and tailoring services to meet individual needs can always be challenging. “Our focus is to ensure that our employees consistently uphold the values and ethos of the institution,” says Srirang.

One way to ensure that the bank feels that way is through its recruitment process. It is also vital because of the bank’s customer 360° banking strategy, which requires employees to have multi-product knowledge and skills. “We don’t select people based on their functional skills; cultural fit is the most important. The bank hires for attitude and trains for skill,” says Srirang.

At the other end, it has also ensured that many of the bank’s HR managers have backgrounds in business roles. Even when it recruits qualified HR professionals, for instance, from top management colleges, they are required to spend the first six months in a business role before transitioning to HR. That has meant that all functional training programmes are conducted by internal trainers. When line managers lead training sessions, they impart knowledge based on their current experiences, making the sessions highly practical. This is crucial because the bank is evolving constantly. “With the evolving needs of our customers, our products, services, and delivery systems need to constantly evolve. Our line managers are best suited as trainers to ensure that all the employees are adequately trained,” says Srirang.

It has also established councils with business managers. These councils, led by business leaders and HR teams, meet regularly—at least every quarter—to gather feedback on the impact of training.

Branching Out

One other aspect that has been reshaped is the branch model. Branches are typically divided into retail, transaction banking, and rural branches. Traditionally, employees in most bank branches focussed primarily on serving consumers in the liabilities business, mainly current account and savings account or CASA deposits. The bank has now transformed branches into business centres, which act as focal points for all products and services offered by it. The branch manager now understands both the risk and the profit and loss.

As part of its ‘Bank to BankTech’ journey, the bank continues to skill employees through its digital academy in line with the vision of a scaleable, future-ready, and data-driven organisation. Employees from across groups undergo skilling in domains like cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

The bank’s digital academy has 15 focus areas. Employees in key areas such as technology, product design, risk management, and audit undergo internal assessments to determine their proficiency—categorised as L1, L2, or L3, corresponding to the requirements of their roles. After that, a road map for skill improvement is provided to employees, and this is also shared with board committees to outline the skill requirements of the bank.

The bank is among the first in its domain to adopt this practice—common in many IT companies. The bank also collaborates with a network of reputed partners, including the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, the online learning platform Manipal UNext, and NIIT University.

It operates a leadership academy, focussing on the 800-member leadership team. It has identified five key focus areas within the organisation: data science, technology, design thinking, project management, and adaptive leadership. Each individual is required to undergo one skilling session every six months. Over the next one to two years, the bank aims to enrol all of the leadership team in these programmes, ensuring that each member possesses at least basic knowledge and awareness in these skill areas.

It’s pretty evident that at ICICI Bank, the focus is on improving with the employees. 

@anandadhikari