After IT companies, Banking firms are also considering the Working From Home model since Bank of Baroda (BoB) CEO and Managing Director, Sanjiv Chadha said that in next 4-5 years, Bank of Baroda (BoB) may consider adopting a model where it will deploy 50 per cent of its employees at the branches and the balance would work from home.
Bank Of Baroda WFH Plans
In the current scenario, around 80 percent of the bank’s staff is working at the branches.
But most of the customers are not coming to the branches.
“They may want to be served where they are and digital banking is becoming more and more routine. Therefore, I would believe that the imperative of keeping 80 per cent of the staff at the front office is going to change,” Mr. Chadha said.
So, the bank will probably change the policy of having so many employees in such roles.
The State-owned bank is also thinking to divide its employees into three categories.
First category will work in the branches, second category mostly have back-office people who work remotely and the third category will have people who can work in a hybrid manner.
“This gives an opportunity to access talent which was not possible previously. It might be possible to even employ fruitful people who have retired but have much to contribute to the bank,” said Mr Chadha.
Further, Chadha said that assisted digital models are going to be an important part.
What About The Other Banking Players?
Prior to this, during July, the State Bank of India‘s chairman, Rajnish Kumar also said that the lender would institute ‘work-from-anywhere (WFA)‘ at the bank.
In doing so, they were expecting to save Rs 1,000 crore from it.
“Despite digitisation, the human-centric business model of banks where there is a personal touch and every customer goes to a branch, will not go away easily, ” said Rajkiran Rai G, the Managing Director and CEO at Union Bank of India.
“The high-touch model is not going to go away. The physical branches are going to be there but then we will leverage more and more technology,” add Mr Rai.
According to Mr Rai, there may be 20-30 percent of customers at the high-end who are fully using digital facilities currently.
It could take another 5-10 years for the majority of customers to shift to fully digital mode.
The bank cannot go 100 percent digital, said L V Prabhakar, the Managing Director and CEO Canara Bank as the public sector bank is having many branches in rural areas which are still struggling with resources.
Further, Prabhakar said that the bank has changed its policies to get future-ready and “they will have to balance carefully so that I can address the people who cannot do digital banking and the people who can do digital banking”.
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