December 16, 2009

The country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), may be learning the hard way that it will have to keep its home warm and inviting if it wants to keep its flock together.Faced with employees quitting at almost every level, with salaries nowhere near what private and foreign banks give out, the public sector bank is learnt to have asked global consultant McKinsey & Co to examine where its human resource (HR) policies may have gone awry. SBI has close to 2.10 lakh people on its payroll.

SBI staffers are poorly paid compared to their peers in other central government organisations too, said SK Haldar, general secretary of the State Bank of India Officers Association.In addition to asking McKinsey to look into the reasons for employees leaving — over the past two years, for instance, 180 out of the 2,000 recruited have quit — it has asked the consultant to examine HR issues relating to senior executives above Scale 5 (assistant general managers and above).