Bank of Baroda mulling to move 50% of staff into WFH in 4-5 years

Bank of Baroda (BoB) is looking to move half of its workforce to the work-from-home (WFH) model, while the other half works from branches, MD and CEO Sanjiv Chadha said on Tuesday. The lender is also considering different variations of the model and the transition could allow it to tap into talent hitherto unavailable to the bank, he added.

Chadha said that organisations are changing in terms how they view work and employees now prefer different models of work at different stages of their career.

“Our HR (human resources) models must encompass this change and if we are sufficiently creative and flexible and employee-centric, I don’t believe that this transition needs to be painful at all unlike previous transitions that might have been,” Chadha said, adding, “I think it is quite possible that over the next four-five years, BoB is looking at having a workforce only 50% of which may be full-time employed in branches and the balance would be working from home.” He was speaking at the annual HR conclave organised by the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA).

The assisted digital mode is going to be an important part of banking, Chadha said. Even as 80% of bank staff are deployed in front offices, customers may not necessarily be coming to branches. They may want to be served where they are and digital banking is becoming more and more routine, according to Chadha, and therefore, the imperative of keeping 80% of the staff at the front office is going to change. BoB is likely to divide its staff into three categories — people who need to work in the branches, people who are working remotely from the back office and people working in a hybrid manner. Customer needs will dictate the nature of this reorganisation.

“This also gives an opportunity to access talent which was not possible previously. Since you allow people to work remotely or some work can be done remotely, you can actually access top-class talent which may be available for a few hours a day,” Chadha said.

FE had reported in September that BoB is scouting for consultants to help overhaul its strategy and processes. Among the areas of revamp was the move to a new HR and digital model. The lender had said in a public document that during the pandemic, the need to shift working from centralised and large administrative locations to distributed administration and operations became apparent. Further, there is a need to infuse many new capabilities and “many more hands” required to take BoB to serve over a hundred million existing and future customers.

BoB is working to “reimagine the branch” through a branch transformation programme, which will include centralisation, digitisation and simplification. They will also help identify people freed from branches to be moved into sales and revenue-generating roles.