BoB may give employees longer stints abroad

Among public sector banks (PSBs), Bank of Baroda (BoB) is planning to offer a longish stint (9-10 years) to its officials in its overseas offices.

This is to ensure that officials of the bank, which prides in calling itself India's international bank, develop necessary skills to be competitive in developed markets, particularly North America and Europe.

It would ensure human resource stability for its foreign operations by carving out a separate cadre "� Baroda Foreign Service.

BoB, like all other PSBs with foreign operations such as State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of India (BoI), currently sends its officials to work in foreign offices for a maximum of three years.

"The idea is to have managers and officers to have 2-3 stints in advanced markets than just one stint spanning over three years which is the case now," Anil Khandelwal, chairman and managing director of BoB, said.

In contrast, ICICI Bank has made rapid strikes in developed markets such as the UK and Canada with its policy of having a dedicated workforce for international operations.

The banking environment in developed countries is competitive and demand advanced skills in areas such as customer relations and information technology.

"If officials have a fairly long tenure in advanced markets, may be at different locations, a high quality service standards can be maintained especially when the bank is projecting itself as India's international bank," Khandelwal pointed out.

A senior BoB official said apart from customer service, a band of experienced and skilled employees in these locations would also help the bank in rapidly growing business in the target markets.

"In fact, young MBAs could be placed in our branches as part of international assignment. This is expected to nurture loyalty to the organisation (read work much longer with the bank)," Khandelwal said.

Even after the employees are back after overseas stints, they could work in the international business units for bringing the benefit of experience and skills to serve NRIs and Indian corporates who have set eyes on expanding overseas through exports or direct operations, official said.

At present, BoB has 39 branches spread in Europe, the US, West Asia with 85 managers/ officers deputed from India with local staff strength being just over 600 persons. In Africa, it mostly operates through subsidiaries due to regulatory norms in countries such as Tanzania and Botswana.

The share of international operations in BoB's total revenue in 2005-06 was over 16 per cent, while the contribution to net profit was in excess of 27.5 per cent.