Investing in Our Employees

The Bank’s human capital strategy is underpinned by key cultural anchors of fair compensation, learning and growth, care and empathy for employees.

The Bank’s endeavour is to create a responsive workforce, encouraged by empowering the teams to take cues from the local environment and identify opportunities for risk-calibrated growth. The Bank has taken steps to organise and structure teams to facilitate the Bank’s approach to Customer 360°. The Bank has invested in aligning the organisation around micro-markets and customer ecosystems by increasing the density of leadership in key markets.

Fair Compensation

ICICI Bank follows a prudent compensation practice under the guidance of the Board of Directors and the Board Governance Remuneration & Nomination Committee (BGRNC or the Committee). The Compensation philosophy of the Bank is aligned to team performance.

The Bank’s approach to compensation is intended to drive meritocracy within the framework of prudent risk management.

The total compensation is a prudent mix of fixed pay and variable pay, which takes into account a mix of external market pay and internal equity.

The fixed pay offered by the Bank, largely reflects pay for the role. The variable compensation is in the form of share-linked instruments or cash or a mix of cash and share-linked instruments.

The cash component of variable pay (performance bonus) is aligned to the philosophy of 'One Bank One Team' as it is based on overall performance of the Bank and reflects reward for team performance. The grant of share-linked instruments to eligible employees, reflects individual potential and criticality of position/employee. The compensation of staff engaged in all assurance functions like Risk, Compliance & Internal Audit depends on the achievement of key results of the respective functions and is independent of the business areas they oversee.

Learning and Growth

The Bank’s focus on Customer 360^o banking requires employees to have multi-product knowledge and skills. The Bank has robust and dynamic architecture across functional training, leadership development, digital and industry-academia programmes to equip employees with the required skillsets.

As custodians of trust, employees are expected to take decisions which are ‘Fair to Customers and Fair to the Bank’. To strengthen the risk and compliance culture and orient frontline leadership to it, the Bank has included it in its induction programme, workshops and mandatory e-learning programmes which reinforces the need to apply the Bank’s framework, while dealing with such situations within the guardrails of risk and compliance.

Overall, during fiscal 2023, the Bank delivered a total of over 12 million learning hours for its employees.

The average learning person-days for this period was around 12.2 days. In fiscal 2023, all employees of the Bank were trained on health and safety measures and almost all (over 99%) employees were trained on skill upgradations.

Industry-academia Initiatives

The Bank has collaborated with academia partners to provide a steady supply of quality, job-ready workforce. One of the key aspects of the industry-academia programmes is the skills it builds in the banking, compliance, financial and digital services domains. This aligns new hires to the culture of the Bank and imparts functional knowledge in banking and related subjects.

Building a Digitally-Enabled Workforce

As part of Bank to Bank^Tech journey, the Bank continues to skill employees under the Digital Academy in line with the vision of a scalable, future-ready and data-driven organisation. Employees from across groups undergo skilling in domains such as API & Micro Services, Cloud Computing, Data Engineering, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and Project Management.

To mitigate cybersecurity domain risks, the Bank conducted a dedicated Cybersecurity Programme in partnership with reputed institutes covering areas such as infrastructure security, network security, digital forensics, incident management and network analysis.

Leadership Development and Succession Planning

The Bank regularly conducts Leadership Development Programmes and Leadership Engagement Sessions. The ‘Ignite' series is an ongoing initiative designed to keep the employees abreast with breakthroughs in the domains of leadership, digital transformation, data science and behavioural economics. The sessions provide an opportunity for teams to engage with domain experts and thought leaders in these areas.

The Bank has institutionalised a succession planning and leadership development initiative to identify and groom leaders for the next level. The Bank has a robust succession planning process which measures the depth of leadership bench at the senior leadership levels. The Bank has a strong bench for key positions and for critical leadership roles.

Care and Empathy for Employees

Employees are the most important capital for the success of the Bank’s strategy and growth of the organisation. The Bank believes in providing an enabling work environment that helps employees to achieve aspirational goals. The Bank is an inclusive and a caring workplace, driven by meritocracy and equal opportunities for all. The prominent frameworks set forth for a caring workplace are:

• The Bank has set in place robust facilities to provide crucial support to employees for exigencies, medical attention and grievance handling.

In addition, the Bank is also committed to promoting and respect human rights. It has put in place policies to provide an enabling and harassment-free work environment that respects and upholds individual dignity. The Bank's Human Rights Policy is aligned with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) and International Labour Organisation’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

The Bank realises that differently abled employees and workers need special arrangements in premises for their mobility and independent functioning. Therefore, the Bank has provided ramp facility at many of its business centres and at the remaining business centres, the Bank displays, at the entrance, the location of the nearest business centre with ramp facility. At some of the Bank’s owned premises, lifts have braille character pads for the visually impaired. Additionally, washrooms for differently abled are made available on the ground floor at some locations. Certain large offices have special equipment, such as stretchers and wheelchairs, for ease of movement.

At the Bank, sexual harassment cases are handled as per the guidelines set under The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition & Redressal) Act, 2013. The policy ensures that all such complaints are handled promptly and effectively with utmost sensitivity and confidentiality, and are resolved within defined timelines. The Bank has created awareness about the regulations through mandatory e-learning at the time of induction. The Bank also regularly communicates with employees including through e-mailers, regarding the mechanism for raising complaints and the need for right conduct by all employees.

Enabling Work Environment

The Bank’s efforts at ensuring a safe and healthy workplace ranges from green certification of its premises, adoption of best practices relating to safety, periodic review and audit of premises, and investing in technology for enhancing safety and security. With regards to the fire hazards, periodic testing of fire detection and alarm systems as well as suppression systems, evacuation drills, training employees on emergency preparedness, central control of non-critical equipment, and deputation of safety officers and floor marshals at towers, large offices and Integrated Currency Management Centres (ICMCs) were some of the key measures adopted. The Bank also undertakes periodic assessment of air quality. Arrangements for improving air quality and reducing CO₂ levels at all large offices are undertaken. Air handling units have been replaced with three stage air filtration system at all towers.

Digital@HR

To deliver superior service at scale, our ethos of care and our strength of technology came together to craft an intuitive and seamless experience for our employees.

As employee needs evolve, ICICI Bank is committed to serving employees with passion and care.