On Friday, a top industry official noted that the banks are mulling to hire graduates under 25 years of age as apprentices in a month.
Banks Hiring Bank Graduates In A Month
Further, these lenders will be paying a stipend of Rs 5,000 a month to such candidates and they will be trained on a specialized skill set during the stint, as informed by the industry lobby grouping Indian Banks Association’s chief executive Sunil Mehta to the media.
This move comes after a budget announcement by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
As per this announcement, the government is targeting to provide internships at top-500 companies for up to 1 crore youth over the next five years.
It appears that the hiring at lower levels in public sector banks (PSBs) is expected to slow down in 2024-25, noted by some senior executives of PSBs and industry experts.
Further, they attributed increasing digitisation of basic functions for this shift.
Adding, “We are investing in digital methods which have given us good results. Basic functions like query handling and collection at times have been successfully happening digitally. Maybe employee hiring for these roles does not happen aggressively.”
“Some functions are expected to stay offline but we are looking at growing our digital services,” said another executive while adding that investing in digital products will increase.
Reducing Employee Count
It appears that the total number of employees in PSBs fell on a year-on-year basis, as shown by the data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The same is reflected in numbers as it stood at 8,59,692 in 2013-14, falling to 7,56,644 in 2022-23.
PSBs have witnessed employee headcount falling by 15,000 to 20,000 every year.
Furthermore, the number of employees at the clerical level dropped in the last few years as revealed by the data.
Earlier in 2013-14, the total number of clerks at PSBs dropped from 3,15,292to 2,57,771 in 2022-23.
The count of the total number of subordinate officers too fell, to 1,01,555 in 2022-23 from 1,56,218 in 2013-14.
The attrition is seen to be high at some private sector banks and that the central bank is watching the issue “closely”, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on October 31, 2023.
Further, every bank has to build a core team to take care of such issues, Das said while Touching on some major banks reporting attrition rates of over 30 percent.
Adding that the career outlook of youngsters has changed with regard to job switching and added that the youth is “thinking differently” on this aspect now.
There is a need to add more jobs at the clerical level considering the increasing pressure at the branch level, Bankers and bank unions said.
