As competition for new business intensifies, a section of public sector banks (PSBs) have issued orders stepping up pressure on employees to work harder to meet targets, including being asked to work on holidays and weekends, bank circulars reviewed by Moneycontrol showed.
For instance, a circular issued by the divisional head office in Delhi of Punjab National Bank (PNB) to all its branch heads said the lender is launching a campaign for generating leads for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) on Sunday, March 5.
The circular directed the heads and the employees to visit prospective customers and gather leads for MSME and retail sectors lending.
MSME and retail loans are “important for our bank” as they provide a steady source of income through interest and fees. These loans also help banks meet their priority sector lending targets and promote financial inclusion, the circular said.
“So, to support this campaign, you are requested to visit all the prospective customers along with your teams on 05.03.2022 (Sunday) to fetch a sizable number of leads in MSME/retail,” the PNB circular said.
Similarly, UCO Bank’s Bhogarai branch in Odisha has directed all its employees to work on all days of March, except Holi.
The circular by the senior branch manager said, “It is our responsibility now to take the branch and the bank ahead from this crucial time where growth is visible and it is only possible by achieving our own allotted targets as we are in the last month of this financial year. We are far behind in our targets, particularly in the CASA (current accounts and savings account, total deposit, and every segment of advances. So all of us need to put our special efforts to achieve our allotted targets.”
In the case of Indian Bank, a person aware of the matter, on condition of anonymity, said it too has asked its employees to work till late in the evening. “Zonal officers are making senior branch officials work till night,” the person said.
Emails sent to PNB, Indian Bank and UCO Bank seeking comments didn’t elicit any response till the time of filing this story.
When it comes to work conditions and environment, banks, and particularly PSBs, have traditionally been rated poorly by employees. Heavy workload, improper work-personal life balance, etc., have been some of the complaints made by bank employees.
Take the example of the Bank of Maharashtra.
In January, more than 2,000 of its employees protested against the workload and pressure they faced from the management. They complained that the quantum of work assigned to them by senior officials was too much and even proposed hiring more people, to which the public sector lender did not respond.
Bankers and experts suggested that bank managements are pushing their employees to put in extra hours so as to meet targets before the end of the fiscal.
A PSB employee who did not want to be named said that almost every bank has in some form or the other issued notices to its employees telling them to work every day in March.
“Normally, March is the financial year-end period and due to this, the workload is more than normal for bank employees. But senior officials are taking undue advantage of this and giving work other than what is to be done by the end of the financial year,” the person said.
Rupam Roy, General Secretary All India Bank Officers Confederation and President All India State Bank of India Officers Federation, said: “Banks sometimes fail to understand the work-life balance. They sort of harass the employees without understanding their condition.”
Bank unions have in the last few days taken to social media to allege that many lenders, in their communication channels for employees, have started to call employees to work on holidays and weekends.
On this, Roy said: “Generally, zonal managers of some banks put pressure on their employees to work for more targets and take no leaves.”
Recently, bank employees along with some bank unions reiterated their demand for a five-day work week, pending back to at least 2015.
In the 10th Bipartite Settlement signed in that year, the Indian Banks’ Association, which represents the management side of the industry, had agreed after the approval from the Reserve Bank of India and the government that the second and fourth Saturdays would be holidays.
As per a circular issued by All India Bank Employees Association, the IBA is now considering acceding to the demand for a five-day work week but with the rider that total working hours be raised by 40 minutes per day.
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