As a pioneer in innovative banking, what programs have you launched to attract, retain, and promote women in a sector that is still evolving?
At Central Bank of India, innovation isn’t limited to technology—it extends deeply into people practices. As a public sector bank with over a century of legacy, we have continuously evolved—especially in advancing women’s participation, leadership, and empowerment within banking. Below, I share how we are making progress through targeted, data-driven, and values-oriented programs.
1. Reimagining Recruitment: From Tradition to Agility
Historically, banking recruitment in the public sector was dominated by permanent hiring cycles—a lengthy, resource-intensive, and rigid process. In practice, this delayed filling specialist roles or emerging skill needs, and often constrained agility.
Recognising this, we adopted a hybrid recruitment model: partnering with agencies using AI-driven platforms to perform resume sourcing, screening, and shortlisting. Over 80% of the initial process now runs through automated systems, ensuring faster candidate pools and higher accuracy. This has reduced time-to-hire by nearly 40%.
For women candidates, this shift means a more responsive hiring timeline and better access to roles that might previously have been closed due to procedural delays.
2. Women-First Branch Model & Role Visibility
One of our boldest steps has been establishing All-Women Staff Branches in all 90 regions. These branches serve three strategic purposes—gender visibility in customer-facing roles, leadership opportunities for women, and signaling to communities that women can lead banking services locally.
This approach has led to greater community trust, more applications from women candidates, and internal success stories of women who started in branches and climbed into senior roles.
3. Leadership, Mentorship & Learning Ecosystems
We run comprehensive training and mentorship schemes tailored for women:
Women’s Leadership Training Program for officers in Scale IV and above, focusing on strategic thinking, decision-making, and cross-functional leadership.
Mentorship programs pair junior women employees with senior women mentors, facilitating career guidance, psychological safety, and sponsorship.
ERG (Women’s Employee Resource Group) runs skill-building workshops, wellness sessions, and peer support networks—fostering community, confidence, and continuous learning.
To further fuel growth, we have instituted sabbatical leave policies for higher education and personal/family reasons, ensuring that career breaks do not mean career death.
4. Policies That Honor Reality
We understand the unique pressures women often face—family, caregiving, transfers—so we have built policies that reflect empathy:
Cent Mamta, a maternity support program offering counseling to women and their families before, during, and after maternity leave.
Exemption from rotational transfers for women with children under two years, allowing stability in early motherhood.
Childcare allowances, safe work-hour guidelines, and support for travel arrangements in late hours create a safer, more supportive workplace.
Cent Shakti portal for POSH complaints and mandatory e-learning modules ensure that workplace dignity and safety are upheld.
5. Digitization & Transparency in HR
We evolved our HR functions with a modern HRMS platform to streamline routine tasks—leave applications, reimbursements, training enrolments, appraisals, and more. This reduces administrative burden and offers greater transparency and visibility of processes.
Data from these systems feed Individual Development Plans (IDP), allowing tailored growth paths for women employees. Analytics help us spot attrition risk, representation gaps, and skewed feedback, enabling proactive interventions.
6. Talent Retention & Engagement Metrics
Because performance—especially of women employees—is influenced by environment, not just opportunity, we track metrics rigorously:
Women officer retention has improved by ~12% over a recent period.
Engagement scores for women-specific programs often exceed overall averages by 15–20%.
Time-to-hire dropped by ~40%, freeing resources and improving workforce agility.
Internal surveys show high satisfaction with career support, mentorship, and training programs among women staff.
7. Storytelling, Culture & Internal Advocacy
We promote narratives that matter: real stories of women bankers, how a branch in a remote town impacted livelihoods, how a young woman used a loan to scale her micro business. That narrative is woven through internal communications, employee testimonials, and community outreach.
Our Cent Sanskriti initiative brings together employees’ spouses in community service efforts, fostering a broader ecosystem of support and reinforcing a culture of inclusion beyond just banking.
8. Benchmarking & Recognition
Our results have not stayed behind closed doors. The Bank has received accolades such as the MarksMen Award for Best Workplace for Women and the Skoch Award for digital transformation efforts. These honors validate our strategies and inspire other institutions in the public banking sector to adopt inclusive practices.
Conclusion
Our mission is simple yet profound: we don’t just want women to join banking—we want them to lead, innovate, and transform it. By integrating empathy, technology, structural support, and cultural storytelling, the Central Bank of India is creating a workplace where women aren’t merely participants—but architects of India’s financial future.
