Confident to Succeed

Abstract

The case depicts the success story of a bank that was managed by a board of directors, comprising of nominees of the government, eminent persons from various fields, workmen union and officers' association nominees. The chairman of a reputed bank was ex-officio chairman of the bank and the managing director was also the chief executive officer. The day to day operations of the bank were managed by a team of top management executives. The organisation set-up was adequately decentralised with the bank having zonal offices at Indore, Bhopal, Delhi and Mumbai and nine regional offices at various places. The bank was an authorised dealer in foreign exchange and had a fully-fledged Forex Treasury in Mumbai and correspondence at all major financial / commercial centres across the world. The bank followed traditional human resources (HR) practices. However special attention was paid to the performance appraisal of officers, which was based on the exclusive perception of the appraising officer, who was the officer at the next higher level at which the appraisee reported. Thus, this traditional annual confidential report system was very subjective in nature. The bank decided to adopt a new system of appraisal from the year 2002-2003 as it was realised that the HRD (HR department) mechanisms needed to be looked into again, especially due to the entry of private sector banks in the market and rising competition. Thus, a new appraisal system was devised to bring objectivity to the system. In view of mounting competition from private sector banks the bank also decided to introduce a core banking system to enhance customer satisfaction. Under this system, an account holder became the customer of the bank and not of a particular branch, thereby getting facilitated in operating his accounts. The bank had to face resistance from the staff and had initial teething problems during implementation, but management was quite confident that they would overcome the problems in time. The purpose of the case is to make the students / participants understand the importance of HRD mechanisms with special reference to performance appraisal systems and management of change. Issues involved in the case are performance appraisal and resistance to implementation of the new system of operations. Each issue needs to be discussed for at least 30 minutes. The case highlights the relevance of various methods of performance appraisal and resistance to change. The case is a good example of an open appraisal system and 'specialised team intervention' as a tool for organisation development (OD). Students / participants should have a fair idea of OD interventions. The case should be first analysed at individual level and then at group level with 4-5 students / participants in each group.