Large private lenders join hands informally to stem attrition tide

livemint.com:

Mumbai: Large private sector banks such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and Axis Bank have informally agreed among themselves not to poach employees from each other, as they seek to stem attrition, particularly at the junior level. Senior executives in these private banks have told Mint that they are ensuring that candidates with less than 2 years of work experience are not hired from a rival lender. “We did have attrition which is very high at the junior level.

It’s a similar problem that the IT industry had faced. We also probably had this incest, that is one employee going to the other bank, and each one looking for 40-50% higher salary. That seems to have slowed down.

There is some informal understanding, like how the IT companies have had, saying that let’s not kill ourselves," said a senior official at a large private-sector bank. According to another senior banker, the need for a best-practice rule started right after the pandemic when there was rampant hiring of junior executives in sales and marketing profiles. “We decided last year to not poach executives who have served less than 1-2 years in the rival bank.

This informal agreement is to prevent the high attrition level where executives were changing companies every six months," said the banker. Emails sent to Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank went unanswered till press time. Banks have been seeing attrition as high as 60% among the junior executives, a challenge termed ‘infant mortality’ internally.

The banking sector has tempered hiring, as as they are nearing optimal manpower levels in different business units. The “trajectory" in this was rampant hiring when banks faced attrition of around 35-40% in many of their businesses. In the last financial year, lenders