Srinagar , April 02 - In a landmark move, the J&K Bank today announced an enviable package of incentives and opportunities for its employees to groom an energized and committed human resource for the Bank's ambitious expansion plans. The incentives package " Nai Subah" unfolded by the Chairman/CEO of the Bank, Dr Haseeb Drabu here this evening cover a wide range of issues closely related with the performance of the employees of any organization. "The philosophy and approach of leadership towards people's issues is that the employee oriented issues must include recruitment, development and learning, work environment and communication, rewards and recognition, health and well being, balancing work and personal life and last but not the least financial security," Dr Drabu said and added that the package he was announcing today is aimed at initiating the much-desired cultural change in the Bank to make it an employer of choice. Acknowledging the crucial role played by the employees of the Bank in its exceptional growth, Dr Drabu emphasized that the employees are the drivers of the human resource while the top management and the human resource team are only the facilitators. "Today we are together embarking on a new journey and all of you have to play your role in making J&K Bank an engine of growth not only for the organization but the society as well," he said and assured that his support and commitment would be always there for his colleagues.

Dr Drabu emphasized that transparency, people-oriented policies and a culture of knowledge-sharing is the Bank's philosophy, and the management of the Bank is committed to ensure a work place, a work culture and a work environment that fully engages the intellectual and emotional commitment of its employees. He said the employee-oriented measures unfolded today would achieve a real competitive advantage by nurturing the real assets of the Bank - its people. The set of incentives announced by Dr Drabu include skill advancement programmes, pay enhancement, mass promotions, an improved transfer policy, increase in variable and revamped performance management system, regularization of all the adhoc employees, a new generation organizational set up and designations and foreign tour on LFC.

Under the skill development program, the Bank would lay stress on behavioral and technical training and train its employees in new skills to keep up with the industry, fine-tune their job skills and learn to work independently. To ameliorate the promotion avenues, the Bank has created additional zones in the State and accordingly a massive dose of promotions, first on such a large-scale in the history of the Bank, was announced today. The promotions include seven AGMs as DGMs, nine Chief Managers as AGMs, 132 scale III officers promoted as Chief Mangers and 366 scale-II officers have been promoted to scale-III. The Bank has also formulated a new "Posting Policy" that shall be uniform, acceptable and transparent based on rational principles and objective criterion for all. In future, the postings would be done in the months of April and November every year. In a significant decision, henceforth, the Bank would pay HRA to its employees for different locations on the basis of the market norms. The employees would also get transit insurance for the goods while shifting to their place of posting. The Bank announced hard area allowance of 15%, 10% and 7% of the basic pay to be paid to the employees posted in the areas identified as hard areas like Leh, Kargil, Kupwara, Poonch, Rajouri and Doda.

For IT personal night shift allowance of 20% of the basic pay was announced for working during the night. The Bank would tie up with schools in the major city locations to ensure admission of a maximum of two children of the new posted Bank employee at that place or the Bank would bear the cost of deposit or one time fee charged by the school upto a maximum of Rs 10,000. The Bank has announced performance based pay for its employees. All the employees of the Bank would be eligible for performance based pay directly linked to annual performance rating. After a pay hike of 15% in February 2007, the Bank today announced an increase of further 10% in the salaries.

The Bank announced regularization of all those adhoc employees who have been working in the branches for the last 10 years. The selected persons would be put on a consolidated pay of Rs 3500 per month for two years. To reflect the modern paradigms, the Bank announced a new set of designations for its employees. As per the restructured organizational framework, The General Managers have been designated as Presidents, DGMs as Vice-Presidents, AGMs as Senior Executive Managers, Chief Mangers as Executive Mangers, Scale-III as Senior Executive, Scale-II as Executive, Scale-I as Associate Executive, Cashier-cum-Clerk as Banking Associates, Assistant Cashier-cum-Clerks as Assistant Banking Associates and Peons as Banking Attendants.

The Bank has announced a career development program for the Banking Associates as per which all the vacancies shall be posted on the internal job posting portal of the Bank. Employees who satisfy the criteria for the position shall be selected on 6/12 months probation for the new position before confirmation. The Bank has also announced a new scheme in LFC that would be operational from Ist April 2007. Executive Director, Mr Abdul Rauf Fazili and other senior Executives of the Bank were present on the occasion.