ICICI Bank 2014 Annual Report Download - page 55

Annual Report 2013-2014 53
Bank. The various industry-academia programmes serve the twin objectives of acculturation and ensuring
first day-first hour productivity of the new hires. This investment in industry academia initiatives has made
a significant impact on sales and customer service. This is reflected in the growth of the Bank’s retail
franchise.
Leveraging innovation and technology:
Constant innovation and challenging the status quo have been key aspects of the Bank’s culture. Ideas
that bring about change in order to continually improve, adapt and create competitive advantage are
encouraged among all employees, irrespective of their position or function. Innovation at the Bank is
a well-structured process and is nurtured by the Innovation Steering Committee. The Bank strives to
offer innovative services to its customers by implementing new technologies in various areas. The Bank
is credited with many firsts in India such as internet banking, mobile banking, automated branches,
Facebook banking and iWish. The recent Tab Banking initiative by the Bank is another first in the country.
The Bank has leveraged technology and used innovative methods to assist employees to serve the
customers effectively. It uses game and simulation based training to develop service and transaction
processing skills in employees. The Bank now provides real-time performance support to employees
“Business Companion”, a smart phone/tablet based performance support tool for employees across
business groups who need real time, on-the-go access to critical product and process related information.
Easy access to product and process knowledge, while on the move, has helped the relationship teams
and operations groups to reduce rework and strengthen our “leadership through service” proposition to
the customers.
Leadership depth at various levels:
The Bank has a strong focus on leadership and talent development within the organisation. The Bank
believes in grooming and preparing internal talent for future leadership roles. At the senior management
level, ICICI Bank ensures nurturing and building adequate cover for critical leadership roles. This is tracked
through a Leadership Cover Index (LCI). In addition, the Bank has built a deep leadership bench for all critical
positions up to the middle management level and sales, service and operations roles. An internal bench
for such critical roles is created through placement of prospective incumbents as understudy to these
roles. This ensures continuity and facilitates a long term, steady association with customers. The Bank
also leverages its internal, role-linked, functional training academies to provide the requisite knowledge
and skills to employees, enhancing the pool of suitable successors for critical roles. These academies
provide banking knowledge with focus on application-orientation. The Branch Banking Academy conducts
the Branch Leadership Programme to train and certify eligible employees to assume leadership roles in
branches. Skill through Drill, a 12-week video based programme is conducted for all branch employees
to build skills in threshold service behaviours through regular practice and role plays. The Bank was first
in the country to launch a unique programme called,“Service Assessor Programme”,for building service
excellence in branches. Under this programme, service assessors video record live customer engagement
by employees in select 900 branches across the country for coaching and providing feedback on service
skills and engagement behaviours. The Branches that exemplify the service ethos are felicitated during
the celebration of the Spirit of Leadership Awards every year. For employees in the sales function, the
Bank has recently launched a structured career progression plan for high performing sales personnel
called STAR (Sales Talent Acceleration and Recognition). Under this programme, a set of high performing
sales personnel are selected into the Probationary Officers’ programme of the Bank. The STAR program
aims to inculcate strong relationship skills in the frontline managers for bringing to bear the Khayaal Aapka
philosophy in every customer engagement. The availability of a deep leadership bench, at all levels, has
been the key differentiator for the successful execution of the Bank’s strategy.