Private banks step up hiring; top five add over 15,000 staff in FY13

Leading private sector lenders are in top gear when it comes to expanding their headcount and just five of them, including ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank, added more than 15,000 employees to their payrolls in fiscal year 2012-13.

The expanded workforce also seems to be giving them rich dividends in terms of improvements in their employee productivity, shows an analysis of the annual staff details of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

At the same time, full-year staff costs also rose for all the five banks.

Together, the five banks saw their cumulative headcount rise by 15,823 persons in the latest fiscal, ended March 31, 2013, to close to 2 lakh employees.

While HDFC Bank had the biggest workforce (69,065) among the five at the end of the fiscal, the highest increase (6,163 employees) was recorded by Axis Bank in absolute terms.

HDFC Bank's workforce rose by 2,989 employees, while that of ICICI Bank rose by 3,789 persons to 62,065 during FY13, shows the details published in the banks' latest annual reports.

Axis Bank saw its headcount rise to 37,901 employees, while Yes Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank also expanded their staff strength by 1,382 and 1,500 persons, respectively.

The collective headcount of the five banks stood at 1,99,555 as on March 31, 2013.

The five banks together incurred total employee expenses of close to Rs 13,000 crore in the year 2012-13, marking an increase of about Rs 1,700 crore, with HDFC Bank leading the charts in terms of increase as well as the total staff costs for the fiscal year.

While per-employee profitability rose for all the five banks, four of them also recorded an improvement in their respective business per employee.

Axis Bank was the only one to see its business per employee dip marginally to Rs 12.15 crore, from Rs 12.76 crore in the previous fiscal year.

Yes Bank was on the top in terms of per-employee profits as well as business. Its profit per employee was Rs 21 lakh, followed by Axis' Rs 15 lakh, ICICI Bank's Rs 14 lakh and Rs 10 lakh each for HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

The per-employee profitability is derived by dividing the bank's net profit after tax by the number of employees, while the 'business per employee' is the average deposits plus average advances divided by number of employees.

Yes Bank recorded per-employee business of Rs 17.7 crore, followed by over Rs 12 crore for Axis and Rs 6-8 crore for the remaining three.

All the five banks said that their employees were there 'core resource' and detailed various initiatives taken by them for strengthening their respective employee value propositions.

ICICI Bank said it undertook a special initiative last fiscal year to recognise the contribution made by its long-serving employees, wherein about 15,500 staff members having spent more than five years with the bank were presented with a personalised letter signed by Chanda Kochhar, its managing director and CEO.