The Human Side of Banking

As fresh talks begin on the 5-day banking demand of public sector banks, focus returns to the pivotal role of PSBs and the need for a comprehensive HR strategy to strengthen them. For India’s PSBs to rank among the world’s top 50 banks, their workforce must be well-trained, adequately compensated, and high on job satisfaction.
The government, through the Indian Banks’ Association, claims it has improved bank employees’ working conditions, transparency and welfare, and remains committed to their concerns. 
The approach, however, needs an overhaul. With rising digitisation, automation and AI, a banker’s role has evolved—especially in PSBs, where staff must handle everything from onboarding rural customers to acting as wealth managers for upmarket clients.
A well-rounded strategy that builds capacity beyond professional skills and helps bankers navigate pressure, ethical dilemmas and financial stress must therefore form part of the overall approach.
New Challenges...
PSBs took banking to remote areas, drove financial inclusion, extended agri and MSME credit, handled government business, pensions and DBT, and stayed available in crises, most notably during demonetisation in 2016 and COVID-19, when branches remained open for essential services.
Today, multiple regulatory requirements, data protection, audit trails, differentiated products and increasingly sophisticated financial instruments have added layers of responsibility to the traditional functions of banking, compounded by cyber threats and digital fraud. 
Adequate staffing and strong operating-level controls are therefore more critical than ever. This structural issue needs serious attention, as many rural and semi-urban branches still run with limited manpower.
The imbalance between the complexity of responsibilities and the manpower available at the point of delivery needs to be examined objectively. The answer to an expanding list of responsibilities cannot always be another reporting layer. Sometimes it has to be another person at the branch.
Step Up...
There is also a growing need to strengthen operational discipline. In a small branch, where two or three employees may handle multiple functions, operational shortcuts can sometimes develop. Sharing passwords or user credentials to facilitate work is one such dangerous practice. It weakens accountability and creates operational and cybersecurity risks.
The solution should not merely be punitive after something goes wrong. Banks need systems that make the right behaviour easier. Individual user access must remain individual. Adequate backup arrangements, leave substitutes and segregation of duties should be built into branch staffing models.
The Human Touch...
Banks should periodically undertake branch-level workload and manpower reviews, particularly in rural and semi-urban branches, so that staffing reflects the actual volume and complexity of work. A young banker posted to a difficult branch should not be left to discover the pressures of the job entirely on his or her own. Structured mentoring, particularly during the early years of service and after difficult transfers or promotions, should become part of the institutional culture.
Mentoring should be a defined responsibility of identified senior officers rather than an informal arrangement dependent on individual goodwill. Confidential professional counselling should also be readily available, with an assurance that seeking help will not automatically affect an employee’s career prospects.
Equally important is creating an environment in which an employee can report a mistake, irregularity, or personal financial difficulty at an early stage. Accountability cannot be diluted, but fear should not prevent an employee from seeking help before a problem becomes irreversible.
What is needed is institutional action rather than occasional programmes.
The strength of a bank is not measured only by deposits, advances, profits, capital adequacy or digital transactions. It is also reflected in the well-being of the people who make all these possible. 
That human side of banking deserves as much institutional attention as the numbers on it.

(Bikas Narain Mishra is a retired Bank Manager. He was Member of  Indian Banks’ Association)