The State Bank of India, with over 2,00,000 employees, has a very elaborate training network comprising 46 Learning Centres and 4 Apex Institutes developed over 50 years to cater to the competence building of its employees. The network was hitherto looked after by the respective operational units. It has now undertaken a massive revamp of its training system.
The revamp, a vision of SBI Chairman Shri O P Bhatt seeks to create a world class training system at par with the best any where in terms of content and delivery. The revamped training structure, called a Strategic Training Unit (STU) will bring the entire training system under a unified training command, headed by a Chief General Manager.
The STU has been assigned the task of moving towards converting the State Bank of India into a “Learning Organization” capable of handling change and growth for a Bank aspiring to be amongst the top 20 in the world. SBI has added 25000 new employees to its work force in the last two years and is likely to add another 25000 in the current year. It has also taken on massive branch expansion with over 1000 branches opened in the last fiscal alone. The STU is geared not only towards integrating the new recruits into SBI but also enhancing the knowledge and skills and reorienting attitude of its existing work force. The training system will create a culture that promotes continuous learning and development of the self, group, organization and society. Standardisation of training content is already underway as is standardization of infrastructure across the system, so as to ensure quality. SBI has also been putting its top leaders through customized Leadership Programmes conducted by reputed management institutes.
The Bank, through the STU will expand its e-learning facilities in a large way and also focus on operational research which will help the Bank cope with change and direction setting in a competitive environment.
The STU, located at Hyderabad will be headed by Smt. Mahapara Ali, Chief General Manager. Shri N Raja, the Corporate Development Officer & Deputy Managing Director of the Bank who inaugurated the Strategic Training Unit today said, “Our training system is already considered the best in the industry. By creating the STU, we propose to upgrade our infrastructure, content and delivery further. Leadership development, competency building at all levels and change management will be our focus areas”.
