Bank employees hard work during Covid rewarded as performance incentives roll out, BFSI News, ET BFSI
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Employees of PSU banks which have posted profits are set to get a performance-linked component in the wage agreement signed with the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) in November 2020.
Canara Bank this week paid out a performance-linked incentive to its employees, equivalent to 15 days’ pay. The bank has reported a net profit of Rs 2,557 crore for FY21 as compared to a Rs 5,838-crore loss in the preceding year.
Bank of Maharashtra has distributed a performance-linked incentive to its employees after posting a 187% increase in its fourth-quarter net profit to Rs 165 crore.
How much would SBI employees get
State Bank of India is also expected to announce an improvement in profits. In terms of the wage agreement, its 2.5 lakh employees would get an incentive of five days’ salary if the bank reported an increase in operating profit of between 5% and 10%, and 10 days’ if the increase is between 10% and 15%, and 15 days for any increase above 15%.
Performance-linked incentive plan
IBA had said that to inculcate a sense of competition and also to reward the performance, the concept of the performance-linked incentive (PLI) scheme has been introduced for the first time. The scheme will be effective from the current financial year.
The scheme in public sector banks is based on the operating profit or net profit of the individual bank. It is optional for private and foreign banks. As per the agreement, the PLI would be payable to all employees annually over and above the normal salary payable.
Unions opposition
The bank employees unions had opposed any move to introduce a performance-linked incentive for public sector banks proposed by Banks Board Bureau. They had said it would be a prelude to introducing differential pay as also the concept of Cost to Company at a later stage
Setting performance parameters at various levels of banking functions does not fit well into the banking environment as there are multiple functions for a few and specialist functions for another lot, they had said.
Such parameters may not work well with the functionaries in controlling offices who undertake jobs of evolving and implementing policies and guidelines at the back office. The introduction of such practices are aimed at bypassing the bipartite machinery and casting employees against their own colleagues, they had said.
Unions had also strongly opposed linking their salaries to the performance of the bank, arguing that the financial performance depends on the government policies over which they have no control. Also, most of the losses were on account of large corporate loans which are decided at the top level.
However, the IBA had insisted on the clause to reward better-performing banks and to inculcate a sense of competition among employees of public sector banks.
Improved performance
Despite the pandemic, most public sector banks are expected to improve their performance over the previous year. This is because by the time they finalised their results for FY20, the entire nation was in a lockdown and many banks made significant provisions for Covid impact. The four acquiring banks last year made significant fair value provisioning in the 10-bank mega-merger. As a result, most public sector banks are expected to report a profit during the current fiscal.
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