SBI entrusts mktg task to clerical staff in Kerala

- MPSF meant for focused marketing

- Enhancing bank's footprint

- Better utilisation of manpower

- Shifting staff from transaction-based activity to marketing-based activity

Mumbai: A total of 1,200 clerical staff of the State Bank of India (SBI) in Kerala Circle have been put onto marketing. They were shifted from CBS transactions domain and entrusted with marketing duties with huge targets and salary docking if target not reached.

A Multi-Purpose Product Sales Force (MPSF) has been created at the bank for focussed marketing of all products throughout the Circle. The idea was to have better utilisation of manpower in hand by shifting staff from transaction-based activity to marketing based activity thereby improving the bank's footprint in the market.

The employees identified for the MPSF are to be relieved from their normal duties immediately, says an internal communication from the bank. Each cluster will have minimum three award staff (junior associate/associate/ senior associate) and a Scale-I/Il officer as the team leader.

Team leaders will have additional responsibilities of MPSF in addition to the existing role.

A source in the bank on condition of anonymity said that in an era of digital banking, the footfall of customers has come down like anything at the bank branches. Hence, the bank is deploying its clerical staff for marketing of the bank's various products. It will help the employees to be productive. At the same time, it will help bank too to garner business, the source added.

As per the notification, which was issued on December 19, clerical staff will be reporting to Team Head and Team Head will reporting to Chief Manager(Credit & NPA) at AO in CDS. For all other operational purposes, they will continue to report to respective branch heads. Talking to Bizz Buzz, Venkata Ramana, Chief General Manager of the bank who is currently heading the Kerala Circle of SBI, says, "See, 94 per cent of the bank transactions has become digital now. Very few transactions of the bank are handled at the branch level. But the manpower almost remains the same. By doing this exercise, I was only planning to take out the manpower, which were rendered surplus due to the digitasation, to put them into sales and marketing to help the branches to grow", he said.

This way, the employees will also contribute, and we will reach out to the common man, he added.

MPSF will work in hub and spoke model. Hub branch will be the branch where the team head is currently posted. All the identified members will be doing the activities from hub branches.

HRMS IOs of the team members will be maintained in the same branch wherever it is placed now.

Cluster where RM (PB) or Field Officer of branch is heading the group, there will be no change of role. Wherever service manager is heading the group, his/her role in COS is proposed to be changed to Field Officer role.

Staff identified for the sales will be used for any transactional business purpose. All the teams across the Circle will be doing the marketing activity of a particular product on a particular day as decided by the CMC

A tracker will be created through which the controllers and respective business units can keep a track of the progress. Team leader is responsible to key in the data daily. It is to be ensured that the figures reported and actual data in MIS site should not have variation.

Branches not included in the cluster must do individual marketing for achievement of business targets.