ICICI Bank junks ranks, scraps executive symbols

MUMBAI: In a major HR shift, ICICI Bank has flattened its top management by getting rid of all grades of deputy general manager (GM) and above. Management executives are now known by their role and there are no grade-based benefits. The bank has also got rid of all symbols of hierarchy — no longer can anyone guess an executive’s seniority based on the size of his car or access to the executive dining room.




This is a big shift for a bank where even the internet bandwidth earlier depended on seniority. The move will impact over 400 executives of the level of deputy GM, joint GM, GM and senior GMs. This is the first major change in HR policy since Sandeep Bakhshi took charge as CEO last year.

“We have recently reorganised ourselves to work together seamlessly across functional and departmental boundaries in order to maximise our share of market opportunities. We have moved to role-based designations from grade-based structures and empowered our teams at the local level,” Bakhshi told analysts recently.

“If we have to be agile and nimble-footed, we cannot remain a hierarchical organisation. Because of the grades, these structures and levels got hard-coded and there was a sense of hierarchy,” said group HR chief T K Srirang. Following the shift, the bank will have the flexibility to move an erstwhile deputy GM into a role that used to earlier be filled in by a senior GM.

“This has given us the opportunity to move younger people and give them roles ahead of time,” he said. Business heads will have more flexibility as their power and authority would be related to the role. Earlier, a GM who headed a region would have higher sanctioning authority than a deputy GM in same role.

The other impact for employees is that there will be no automatic promotion based on the period of service. “In any organisation in India, there is an expectation that every three-four years there would be a promotion. Now, instead of sitting in the same role and aspiring for a higher role, executives will have to aspire for a new role to move ahead,” he said. The second big change is that business has been organised around a ‘customer ecosystem’. What this means is that for a set of customers, there would be a head with a composite target to offer multiple products from different verticals.