EKAM (Union Prerna) project Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2024

EKAM (Union Prerna) - “Transforming the Human Resource”

For long the Bank had envisioned to digitally transform its human resource management system and post amalgamation the urge was felt even stronger than ever.

The Bank aspired to build a “next generation digitally enabled Universal Bank known for responsive, responsible and inclusive banking through customer centric business models and significant investment in employee development”.

Post amalgamation, the Bank had already taken multiple initiatives which were focused to drive efficiency and performance by revamping its branch operations, setting up and streamlining Credit Processing Centres, strengthening digital capabilities. Now was the time to invest in HR processes and practices, time to align the employee efforts & capabilities to the big picture and nurture a performance mindset culture in the Bank.

For long revamping the human resource management system of the Bank was being considered for revamping, which finally started to become a reality. In 2020, the Board of the Bank approved appointment of a consultant for a project on ‘Enhancing performance management and talent effectiveness.’

The Bank thus decided to engage top consultants who would have the expertise in this specified area of human resource and who could help the Bank transform its human resource management system and bring in best-in class practices. After conducting an evaluation process, M/s. Boston Consultancy Group (India) Private Limited (BCG) was engaged as the consultant for the proposed HR transformation project.

The Union Prerna Project was introduced to translate the vision of our Bank into action which also aids to cultural integration owing to amalgamation of three Banks with diverse background. The primary objective of the Project was to develop and strengthen a ‘performance mind-set’ in the Bank through implementation of latest digital systems and processes which focused on strengthening the bank’s strategy and achievement of corporate goals and objectives. The project Prerna has built a strong HR foundation by the process of changing operational HR processes into automated and data-driven digital HR.

The overall project works in 3 dimensions:

a) Setting-up the foundation by creating manpower requirement and planning, manpower allocation, defining roles & KRAs, mapping with competencies and bringing in specialization through job families. b) In order to make all these processes well-integrated, more transparent we have digitized the entire process by bringing in digital tools. c) To unlock the full potential of employees, multiple interventions like succession planning, talent management, including creation of IDP etc. We started with the robust diagnostic study as a part of this program, 90+ leadership interviews, 100+ workshops with branches, 50+ discussions with verticals and survey across 30K employees were conducted. This was further supplemented with several data driven analyses like:

 As-is role and KRAs assessment  Evaluation of existing business targets  Analysis of existing PMS score – range, distribution etc.  Analysis of existing postings data Also, we benchmarked the various best practices across banking industry to arrive at the key gaps. All these inputs and data driven insights helped us identify objectively Union Bank’s starting point at the start of the transformation program.