Between, April 2017 and March 2018, some 18,973 employees had retired. At the same time, the Bank also hired 3,211 employees.
The largest PSU bank in the country, State Bank of India (SBI), had its team strength reduced by over 15000 people in the last fiscal. This happened for two primary reasons — retirement and digitisation. The current team strength of SBI is more than 2.6 lakh and it has an employee cost of Rs 35411 crore. In the last fiscal, it brought down its employee cost by over Rs 500 crore.
Between April 2017 and March 2018, some 18,973 employees had retired. At the same time, the Bank also hired 3,211 employees.
Now the Bank wants to fill up the positions with fresh hires. Out of the 10,000 plus employees that SBI plans to recruit, 2,000 will be for the posts of probationary officers (POs), 8300 for clerical posts, and around 1,100 for the reserved category.
The Bank got five other PSU banks merged into it last year. 3,500 employees opted for the voluntary retirement scheme which was offered to the employees of these merged banks.
Rajnish Kumar, chairman, SBI credited the use of digitisation and adoption of artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies for the improvement of the Bank’s functioning. That is why, now it plans to replace only 75 per cent of the reduced team strength.
“The Bank is doing a complete revamp in the training of employees. Focus is on developing the leadership pipeline, improving and enhancing the skills, technology and innovation in the Bank.”