'State Bank of India' to hire over 14,000 people in 2020

Guwahati: Amid the nationwide economic crisis due to the ongoing pandemic situation in the country, the State Bank of India (SBI) on Monday said it has plans of recruiting more than 14,000 people this year.

The bank said that it "has been employee-friendly and is expanding its operations and requires people, which is evidenced by the fact that Bank has plans of recruiting more than 14,000 employees this year". At the same time, it refuted media reports about its proposed voluntary retirement scheme for over 30,000 employees as a "cost-cutting measure."

It is pertinent to mention here that the total employee strength of the country's largest lender stood at 2.49 lakh at the end of March 2020 as compared to 2.57 lakh a year ago.

Earlier, reports had said that a draft scheme for voluntary retirement has been prepared by the SBI and only board approval is awaited.

"SBI has an existing workforce of around 2.50 lacs and has been at the forefront of serving employee needs and designing ways and means for engaging and assisting employees in their life journey," the bank said in its statement. "While our commitment towards our valued employees remains unshakable, we are deeply desirous of skilling the unemployed youth of the country, as is evidenced by the fact that we are the only bank in the country which has onboarded Apprentices under the National Apprenticeship Scheme of Govt of India," the SBI added.

Ahead of the amalgamation of State Bank of India's five associates with it in 2017, the merging subsidiaries had announced voluntary retirement schemes for their employees.

In 2001 also, the SBI had announced voluntary retirement schemes with the objective to "optimize human resources." However, the proposed VRS scheme is not finding favor with bank unions, which have slammed the move.

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