Academic tie-ups ease ICICI's talent crunch & attrition woes

Probationary officers in the making at the ICICI Manipal Academy - ICICI Bank's venture with Manipal University - will now acquire better selling and customer service skills. The academy plans to introduce case studies drawn from field experiences to help them acquire the skills. It also plans to increase the internship from the present three months.

"We constantly align the functional knowledge and skills imparted in the Probationary Officers Programme with the future strategy and requirements of the bank," said T K Srirang, senior general manager, human resources management group, ICICI Bank.

ICICI, in association with Manipal University's Manipal Global Education services, (then Manipal Universal Learning), launched the ICICI Manipal Academy in 2007.

The need for establishing this academy rose when in the early 2000s, ICICI, in a bid to scale up its retail business, looked around for talent but could not see beyond the existing public sector banks - hiring from where would have raised cost issues. So, ICICI introduced an induction programme to train people on the job. In doing this, it had to compromise on time and productivity of its human resource.

A few more trials and errors later, the bank decided to create its own ecosystem, and supply professionals ready to deliver on the job from the first day, first hour. To achieve this, it looked at the B-schools, asking them to tweak their syllabus and seriously look at vocational education. But the B-schools did not oblige. "B-schools were unwilling to negotiate their courses and we found a fundamental disconnect with the objective of B-schools and the way we wanted them to operate. We told them we may have to start our own B-school," says Srirang.

Five years down the line, not only does ICICI meet around 70 per cent of its staff needs from its academic tie-ups, but also has prompted 10 other banks, including Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bank of Baroda, Ratnakar Bank, Federal Bank and Punjab National Bank, among others, to follow the same route.

These tie-ups have not only brought down the attrition rate, but helped in managing costs. "Every time we hire from the market, it leads to a spiral of compensation. In this case, we meet around 70 per cent of our supply at the freshers' level from our tie-ups," says Srirang. Consequently, ICICI's hiring from campuses has come down four times. Earlier, it used to hire around 1,000 students a year from B-school campuses. The number today stands at 250.

A key reason for the success of Manipal and ICICI's programme has been that the institute selects students from Tier-II and Tier-III towns; and a selection criterion is not an English speaking population. "Most B-schools, in a way, select students from Tier-II and Tier-III towns and have an inherent bias for English-speaking students. We, however, believe students from non-metro cities are as intelligent and as capable as any other student in a metro market. We also conduct interviews in the language the students speak," adds Srirang.

While this give IMA a diverse pool of applicants and students, it keeps a check on the price point for ICICI. The students are also taught English at the academy, along with training in basic etiquette.

The programme, a residential one, accepts students from a cross-section of streams and takes 40 per cent female students in a batch. Crafted by ICICI, the 12-month programme is broadly structured into nine months of classroom and three months of internship.

While ICICI's tie-up with NIIT University meets its needs of middle managers, its association with the National Institute of Securities Markets provides it with the executives to work in the treasury and investment functions within the ICICI Group companies. Its partnership with ITM University provides it a pool of sales officers in retail banking. There is a commercial benefit, too. ICICI says, being the largest supplier of bankers in the country, other banks tap into their pool of human resource when they wish to expand.

"By creating an alternative supply of bankers, at an acceptable cost, we have given other banks an option. The pressure of me becoming the supplier has reduced," says Srirang.