Under the leadership of MD & CEO Sandeep Bakhshi, ICICI Bank is undergoing transformative changes, particularly in its HR policies by following a new mantra — ‘One Bank, One Team, One Goal’. ICICI is keeping its eyes on the goal of profitability and, at the same time, ensuring smooth team functioning. The new leadership is revitalizing the Bank and setting tangible goals to pursue.

Sandeep Bakhshi introduces a Work Culture That Brings Out the Best

Sandeep Bakhshi led ICICI Bank now prioritizes on building a work culture that brings out the best in its staff, by creating a synergy between all the brand’s attributes, like product, distribution, and most importantly, people. The goal is to create a unique work culture that sets it apart from other industry players.

Under the CEO – Sandeep Bakhshi, ICICI is empowering its frontline employees more than before so that they can offer the highest level of service to customers in the marketplace, within the guardrails of risk. For instance, the zonal head can now decide whether he needs to set up a branch in a market or geography, or how he would want to organize the workforce. Another important step towards the move was the rechristening of all the corporate offices as ICICI Service Centers.

ICICI Bank, with its 21,000 touchpoints comprising more than 5,300 branches and over 15,000 ATMs, has developed a role-based leadership structure and aims to reduce both vertical and horizontal hierarchies. A manager leverages their relationship with a large corporate to capture all potential opportunities, which he then transfers to other business leads. Additionally, all members of the leadership team are now equally responsible for the performance of the Bank.

To streamline its hierarchy, many graded titles like Senior General Manager (SGM) and Deputy General Manager (DGM) have been done away with  for its 400-strong leadership team. The designations of these managers now display a reflection of their responsibilities, replacing the previous practice of showing their grades.

Undoubtedly, ICICI Bank has been building towards creating a work culture that not just streamlines its functioning but also ensures that employees can take ownership of tasks and take the lead to bring out the best in themselves and the organization.

The Willingness to Experiment

ICICI has been open to experimentation, such as breaking down markets into ‘micro-markets’ based on PIN codes. Here they are encouraging micro-experiments which they aim to replicate at a larger scale.

Incentives

As per media reports, ICICI Bank under Sandeep Bakhshi’s leadership is also going out of its way to make the frontline employees feel appreciated, particularly during the current pandemic.

They have rewarded over 80,000 employees up to 8% pay hike for work done during the Covid-19 situation. This is done to recognize the efforts of frontline, customer-facing staff, which form over 80% of ICICI Bank’s workforce. They have been instrumental to ensure normal functioning of the Bank’s branches and other operations.

Under Sandeep Bakhshi’s leadership, ICICI Bank’s guiding philosophy — ‘Fair to Customer, Fair to Bank’ — is emphasizing the need to deliver a fair proposition to all its stakeholders by ensuring all members of the staff progress together. The work culture created under Bakhshi’s guidance has set ICICI Bank up for success. The openness to trying new things, streamlined processes, and robust teams ensure that the bank is poised for profitability in the new normal.