The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is witnessing an unprecedented revolt from its staffers with the recent past seeing protests along with letters being shot off, highlighting issues related to the allegedly deteriorating work culture at the capital market watchdog though the regulator has strongly rebutted the allegations.
While employee protests are common at workplaces especially when a large number of blue-collar jobs are involved, SEBI has a predominant white-collar staff strength with people with qualifications related to management degree or diploma forming the largest chunk.
Interestingly, in its own words, SEBI is a “young and dynamic organization” with the average age of the staff pegged around 39 years.
The total staff strength of the watchdog is a little over 1,000 – 1,067 to be precise, as on March 31, 2024 – and the largest chunk falls in the age bracket of 31-40 years with 34 percent share. Another 25 percent fall in the 21-30 years category, as per data disclosed in Sebi’s annual report for the year 2023-24.
In other words, a high 59 percent of the total staff strength – 630 in absolute terms -- of SEBI is in the age bracket of 21-40 years.
A total of only 18 percent of the total staff strength of Sebi is in the 51-60 years with another 23 percent in the 41-50 years age bracket.
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In terms of qualifications, nearly 350 staffers or 34.6 percent of the total workforce has a degree or post-graduate diploma in management (MBA/PGDM/PGDBA). The second-biggest chunk of 18.6 percent comes with an engineering background (BE/BTech/ME/MTech), followed by individuals with a law degree (LLB/LLM) that constitute 17.7 percent.
Meanwhile, if one takes into account the grades of the employees, then as many as 729 belong to the Assistant General Manager, Manager, and Assistant Manager grades, followed by 151 Deputy General Managers, which is a rank above.
As on March 31, 2024, SEBI had 63 General Managers and 42 Chief General Managers, which is just one rank below that of Executive Directors who directly report to the Whole Time Members, who, in turn, report to the chairperson of SEBI.
Incidentally, data from the SEBI Annual Report for 2023-24 shows that the quantum of promotions fell significantly in FY24 when compared to the previous fiscal. In FY23, as many as 38 employees were promoted from Assistant General Manager rank to Deputy General Manager while this number fell to a mere five in FY24.
Though the promotions in the Secretary grade saw a spike in FY24 with 35 such promotions compared to nil in the previous fiscal.
In terms of job rotations, a total of 263 officers were rotated or assigned among different departments and regional or local offices in FY24.
“In order to meet the organisational needs and to provide wider exposure to employees for gaining an all-round experience, officers in various grades are posted/transferred as part of inter-departmental and inter-office job rotation measures… Reallocation of departments amongst the Whole Time Members and Executive Directors was also undertaken during the year,” stated the SEBI annual report.
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