Forget 5 Day Banking ----Now SBI Suggests for 7 Days Banking

Sunday banking by end of current fiscal yr: SBI chief

TNN Sep 15, 2012, 01.55AM IST

News Published in times of India 

JAMSHEDPUR: The State Bank of India has announced introducing Sunday banking in the state soon. The Sunday banking concept is already in vogue in a few selected cities in India and probably by the end of the current fiscal year the service would be launched in Jharkhand.

SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhuri, who was here on a visit to launch a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project of the largest public sector bank in the country, has saidJharkhand is on the list of the states that have been indentified for introducing the Sunday banking model. "The thought behind Sunday banking is to provide a particular day for banking to the people who otherwise find bit difficulty to take time out of their work (in office and elsewhere) and the model is designed for urban centers (ideally)," Chaudhuri said here on Friday.

NEWS ends Here

Below Is my Observation

Now it is understood from newspaper reports  that Top Bank like State Bank of India is going to introduce 7 days banking to enhance business growth rate and to increase profitability of the bank keeping in view the rising ratio of bad assets in advance portfolio.

Dubta kya nahin karta.

It is an old proberb in Hindi ‘Bujhta diya tej roshni deta hai’.

Anyway, Employees of SBI will now have to work on Sundays and perhaps on Holidays too.

This is another step to reduce expenses on manpower, increase exploitation of staff and to make all staff so much sick and tired that they forget their families and become a worm in bank 

Further this step should open the eyes of those staff who have been wondering in dreamland since long to have 5 day banking and to spend their so called golden days in banks.

Members of officer's Association and Staff union will now understand how much their leaders are clever that they always keep members waiting for this toy or the other to serve their vested interest. They seldom care for humiliation and exploitation staff are facing and in fact do not like to understand why youth do not want to join bank or if join why do they want to leave bank job as soon as they get another job opportunity.

This exposes hollow promises made by IBA and Ministry of Finance that they will consider 5 days week for bank staff

Let us see what happens with wage revision. No doubt staff will face another setback when they read the real story of wage revision likely to happen after two three years or which may also not happen till 2017 or 2018

SBI is worried of increase in business and top management of SBI specially Sri Pratip Choudhury The Chairman of SBI think that service men in other sectors who have only Sunday as Holiday can enjoy and avail  bank’s services on Sunday if Branches of SBI are kept open. SBI visualize immense business growth on Sunday. He perhaps forgets that staffs employed in SBI have also their families behind them and they have also to take care of their families on Sunday and arrange for necessary goods and facilities on Sunday. He is not aware or he does not want to know that most of bank staff have to work late on other working days and they are already frustrated. They can do nothing for their children on working days and hence the concept of 7 days banking will multiply their agony and do nothing but add fuel to fire

When I joined the public sector bank , people used to tell stories of the past when during mid night if dogs used to bark , people used to guess that a bank employee is passing by and coming back from duty.

Fortunately for trade union leaders those days have come back. Bank employees will seldom get time to enjoy money which they will get as salary and allowances. Obviously bank employees will neither be crazy for attractive wage revision nor will put any problems to their trade union leaders. They will simply go their home to sleep in mid night and come back to office in early morning. Children of bank officer will get appointment in advance if  he or she will like to meet any of  parent

It is five days week for central government employees, multinational companies and many Indian public sector undertaking, it is alternate five days week for insurance companies, many PSUs, many private companies and many multinational companies and now it is seven day week for banks like SBI. There is no uniformity. Dubious and double speaking by politicians and leaders of most of organizations is not uncommon feature in India.

I cannot judge whether it is prudent decision or madness of SBI Chairman, but I can say categorically that it is sign of grave sickness developed in the working system in SBI and other banks. It is foolish to expect any growth in business by using the tool of seven day banking. Rather I will think it better to predict that there will be phenomenal fall in growth of business of such banks both in quality and quantity.

In private banks one can find heavy rush of customers but not same in state run banks. Due to quality of service extended by private banks, these banks have more often than not to keep their branches open till late hours in night and staff have to work late hours to finish their work .But rush of customers in banks like SBI is decreasing day by day and hence they think that they may increase business only by sitting late or by keeping branches open on Sunday. They perhaps do not understand the value of quality of service which play dominant role in growth of business.

In every street and main roads one can find shops open early in the morning and closing late in midnight. Because these shopkeepers do not get adequate sale in normal business hours and hence they think that when other good shops will pull their shutters down, customers will be constrained to come to their door to buy goods .On the other hand there are many such shops where crowd of buyers is so huge that they have to close the sale from time to time to manage the heavy rush of customers. Customers are more concerned with quality and price of product and quality of salesman. They can wait for not only few hours but days and week to purchase goods from their choice shop.

It is worthwhile to point out here that in this age of advanced technology most of the banks have extended internet banking, mobile banking, SMS banking , ATM banking and many other alternate channels for bank customers to do banking .Customers in general do not want to go to any branch of public sector banks till they require some credit faculties .It is also true that management of most of these banks   these banks want customers to do banking from outside and do not disturb them in branches and for this purpose only they give more focus on growth and marketing of alternate channels .This is one of many key reasons that these banks are going away from customers and their actual business is not showing phenomenal growth.

SBI Head Mr. Pratip Choudhury is perhaps targeting those customers who are not able to avail bank’s service by alternate channels nor by branches on week days .Now You are to judge, it is wisdom or his madness or it is simply a tool to keep fiancé Minister happy , to keep RBI officials happy and to keep himself in media coverage so that after the end of Chairmanship of SBI he may be given an opportunity to serve at more important post in RBI or MOF.

Last but not the least

After taking into consideration of all aspects of human psychology and human science, our forefather decided not only in India but in entire world that there should be limited five to eight hours of working for all class of workers giving a gap after five to six day for complete refreshment and rejuvenation of human body and human mind and for making it fit to resume work with fresh energy and vigor. They made ample provision for casual, privilege and sick leaves for service class people keeping in mind various social and family needs as also unavoidable sickness of the workers.

In the age of reformation, bank management is in favour of seven days banking as also 8 am to 8 pm banking. They do not like to sanction any leave to any staff because staffs have become indispensable for banks and they take for granted that staffs are wedded to bank not to their spouse.How unhappy lot of workers will help in boosting up the prospect of business growth in SBI can only be explained by prudent banker like Mr. Pratip Choudhury only.

SBI chairman want to extract blood not only from staff but also bent upon extracting interest on CRR which was not even imagined during last hundred years. Something unique is Mr. Pratip Choudhury. Other banks have to follow the suit .After all bankers have in built herd mentality. Their trade union leaders enjoying majority of members are also blindly relied upon by bank staff .But in this age of fraud and manipulations it is difficult to distinguish between real protectors from those who stab in the back.

In a democratic set up every right or wrong activities undertaken by a group or an organization or a government enjoying support of majority of persons are always considered as good for the country .

Team Anna or any smaller group cannot dream of any change. In this age of flattery and bribery , nothing is true and right other than what leaders speak , follow or not is not important.

Conclusion:  

Staff point of View:  

A group of musclemen can pull a horse near a pond of water but cannot force it to drink water. Similarly bank can force staff to work on Sundays and holidays and sit late hours but cannot make them devoted, loyal and sincere worker to achieve the task of customer satisfaction and delightment.

Customer point of View:  

A person can traverse even 20 kilometers to enjoy a delicious and hygienic dish of food even at higher rate. But he will try his best to avoid a hotel though situated in the vicinity of his house and serving food at cheaper rate but the quality of food served being unhygienic, not tasty and not good looking.

New generation youth like buying branded product at higher rate than buying normal cheap product.

Sale of any product depends on  

quality of product, price of product, accessible and comfort of availability of product and finally the quality of salesman selling the product.

Sale of any shop or any business does not rise even if the shop is open 24 hours and 365 days.On the contrary sale may rise by leaps and bound if the quality of product and salesmen is good.

As such SBI chairman has to rethink on his idea of seven day banking , assess its repercussion on the mindset of staff and finally the utility of such idea in a country where creation of new employment opportunity is more important than to extract work from existing employees by paying him or her petty amount of  additional pay and allowances.

SBI plans to keep branches open on Sundays to help improve biz

MUMBAI, 2012 AUG. 26: 

State Bank of India may have its branches open on Sundays to help improve efficiency, a top bank official has said.

“Possibly we would like to see Sunday working which would increase the time available for doing banking and increase the business,” Bank Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri told analysts on a conference call organised by the brokerage Edelweiss Securities.

The bank had last year taken everybody by surprise by opting to keep all its branches open on October 2 to compensate for a day’s business loss due to a technical snag.

The bank management was happy with the foot falls and the staff turnout at the branches at that time in spite of it being a Sunday as well as a national holiday — Gandhi Jayanti.

Notably, many private banks, which control only a minority share in the banking operations, keep their select branches open on Sundays for customer convenience, even though technologies such as like Internet banking have reduced the need.

Being open on Sundays is said to help the branches attract the new-age working class customers where both the spouses in a household work and struggle to do banking transactions during the week.

SBI, which has almost 14,000 branches across the country, counts on its large chunk of savings account deposits (at over 38 per cent) for higher margins.

However, if such a move were to be made, it would be interesting how the bank unions, which had crippled banking operations across the country last week protesting reform measures, take to such a proposal.

SBI had carried out widely appreciated ‘Parivartan’ programme in the early part of this decade, which helped it stay relevant in changing times and maintaining lead in the market.

During the call, Chaudhuri said the costs incurred on developing physical infrastructure and network does not hit the bank as much as staff costs.

In order to improve efficiency, it will therefore try to delegate routine responsibilities currently done by officers to the low cost junior employees, he said. PTI AA AP GK PTP 08261212

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