SBI’s Nayi Disha initiative to ensure work-life balance

State Bank of India’s new employee-engagement programme, Nayi Disha, will aim to ensure that its 2.6 lakh employees remain highly motivated and ready to take on future challenges.

With its focus on work–life balance, the programme ensures the involvement of the immediate family members of the employees, allowing them to inform the Bank if an employee is unable to leave home, for work, on time.

The programme was introduced when it came to the notice of the Bank that the employees appeared to be low on motivation and morale, and performed their duties rather mechanically. Fearing that this will affect customer service, the Bank has come up with various employee-friendly measures.

Recently the Bank had begun to allow its employees to select the location before transferring a couple, if both the husband and the wife are employees of the Bank. The practice of extending the sick leave in case of healthcare needs of in-laws has also been introduced. The Bank has also started allowing leaves to parents to help their children during exams.

The implementation of the Nayi Disha programme has already begun with the help of external programme designers.

More than 350 trained experts are establishing a connect with each and every employee through sessions lasting over five hours and concluding with a dinner where the spouses are also invited. Fifty per cent of the workforce has undergone training, which will end by mid-March, so that the staff is free to tackle the challenges of the end of the fiscal year.

The employees are required to sign a pledge after the training session, promising to take care of their own health, be responsible towards the environment by not doing any harm to it, and speak good of the Bank, among other things.

The pledge card incorporates a special bar code using which an employee’s spouse can alert the employee’s boss in case the employee is spending too much time at work, so that remedial measures can be taken.