Management

                                                      Banker by Chance, Leader by Choice Writer- Shiv B Singh Book Reviewer - Shri Hari Misra I am happy to share the review of my book "Banker by Chance, Leader by Choice", which has been published in magazine "The Indian Banker" published by Indian Banks' Association, Mumbai. The book is a good guide to Middle and Senior level managerial functionaries, who are on their career progression. The book simultaneously offers good learning exposure to new entrants in the banking industry.

                                     Regional Rural Banks– Some Reflections                              The landscape of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) has undergone transformation in their history of forty five plus years, which were first established in 1975 as joint venture of the Government of India, State Governments and Sponsor Banks. These banks were primarily meant for serving the unbanked semi-urban, rural, tribal and hilly areas of the country with focus on agriculture lending. This was the phase of green revolution and Indian agriculture was becoming capital intensive due to use of high yielding variety seeds, chemical fertilizers and farm mechanization. These bank flourished in their first phase of thirty years expanding the branch and bank network having network of 14,527 branches and 196 Banks in 2004. Thi...

    Work – Life Balance, Step 7- Support U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.gov) has beautifully explained the complexities of the work-life balance as, “One of the biggest challenges facing employees today is balancing personal and work responsibilities. Finding ways to manage childcare, elder care, retirement planning, and more on top of other pressing obligations is not always easy”. This has given the realisation to the corporate world that every employee has a life outside the organisation, which is of equal importance if not more. Therefore organizations are increasingly participating in work-life support oriented programmes for their employees for creating enabling working environment. An article, “The Surprising Benefits of Work/Life Support” published in Harvard Business Review (September-October 2022), has aptly correlated that corporate programmes supporting work-life balance promote productivity, reduce turnover and improve mental and physical he...

  Work – Life Balance, Step 6 – Define Work Hours Famous Sufi saint Kabir said,”Ati ka bhala na bolna ati ki bhali na chup, ati ka bhala na barasana ati ki bhali na dhoop”, which means excess of anything is not good and the same applies for work also as has been quoted by Stanley Kubrick,”All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. The importance of these sayings has been highlighted in the recently published report of International Labour Organization on “Working Time and Work – Life Balance Around the World” and the key finding of the report suggest, “the need to promote reduced hours of work and other flexible working time arrangements such as flexi time and telework, more widely; these types of policies would help to improve work-life balance and thereby benefit both workers and employees”. Some of the facts about the work are: I-                Work is ongoing process. Only assignments are completed. ...

  Work – Life Balance, Step 5- Energy Cycle Scientist Julius R Mayer discovered the Law of Conservation of Energy and now popularly known as First Law of Thermodynamics, which says, “Energy is neither created nor destroyed”. So energy must be put to better uses for maximizing the productivity and efficiency. Similarly human body also has the natural cycle of energy levels, which not only keeps on changing with physical, educational, emotional and psychological changes in the body and mind but also during the day based on the biological body clock. These daily changes in energy cycles release, what is known as Energy Bursts, which are the most creative, efficient and productive phases for individuals because of high energy levels. Triggers, frequencies and durations for these energy bursts vary from individual to individual. The individual creativity, performance and productivity can be substantially improved through effective management of energy cycles and energy bursts. Apart...

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Work –Life Balance, Step - 4 Prioritize Prioritization is one of the most prominent skills for achieving better results from individual and team efforts by focusing the energy and attention on synergies of actions and these actions require resources. The allocation of resources among competing is based on what is known as opportunity cost in the economics, as these actions and resources can be put to alternate use and this alternate use of economic or human resources is the crux of prioritization.   Life always offers options for choices, which are sometimes competing in nature while complementary at other occasions and also conflicting at times. These choices have to be sequentially and simultaneously because of their nature or resource constraint.  Prioritization is the first requirement for optimization of available resources, which can be put to multiple uses and the same holds good for work – life balance too. The canvas of life is much larger beyond the economic asp...

  Work - Life Balance, Step - 3 Values Values are like lighthouses guiding in the right direction in the midst of uncertainty as these values convert into belief system, which become the thoughts and ultimately culminating into ground actions. Non-alignment of values, beliefs, thoughts and actions create disconnect, inconsistency and unpredictability in the individual behavior patterns leading to random responses originating from such conflicting scensrios. This has been beautifully described by famous Urdu Poet Prof Waseem Barelvi as “Usoolon pe jahaan aanch aaye takarana jaroori hai, jo jinda ho to phir nazar aana zaroori hai” which translates into English as “It is necessary to clash for values and those who are alive need to look alive”. One of the recent examples of value based decision has been taken by Ms Aruna Vijay, a Master Chef India 2023 contestant, who refused to use egg in her culinary preparations because of her vegetarian value system. She wrote, “You never run be...

                                 Work – Life Balance, Step - 2 Principle Every creature of this universe has his own role to play in the overall scheme of things, which has been beautifully described by famous play writer W. Shakespeare as “All the world’s a stage” in his famous play “As You Like It”. Co-incidentally, it sounds like the concept of re-birth an enshrined in Hindu Scriptures based on our karmic cycles, though one can alter or modify his karmic baggage through new karmas. This leads us to Step 2 of work-life balance, which is based on Principle. No doubt, work-life balance is highly personal for every individual, which undergoes gradual and sometimes disruptive transformation with changing times and personal preferences, therefore the common denominator has to be evolved based on acceptable “Principle”. The organizations, being the perpetual entity, are being run by the individuals in var...

  Work – Life Balance, Step – One Personal Human Resource Management is gaining increasing traction in the recent past due to changing socio-economic perspective after Covid-19 pandemic. The changing economic dimensions of the developing and underdeveloped economies have added newer dimensions to the complex issue of workforce management. Various restrictions on travel and trade due to lock downs, loss of jobs and shrinking of economies in the first two years of pandemic have added complexity to the already complex issue of work life balance. The work life balance has differing dimensions for organizations and employees, which are also dynamic in nature. Organizational complexities involve different layers of work force (top management to operating lower level employees), different work profiles (production, marketing, sales, personnel, finance and administration etc.), job requirement (full time, part time and contract etc.) geographical diversity, operational requirements (tw...

 Transformation Leadership Award 2022 I am pleased to share that Lucknow Management Association has conferred “LMA Transformation Leadership Award 2022” for strategic and developmental initiatives as Chairman, Aryavart Bank. The facilitation function was presided by Hon’ble Minister, Goverment of Uttar Pradesh Shri J Prasad and Additional Chief Secretary Shri N Sahgal. The function was attended by cross section of the society.

  Work Life Balance My article on "Work Life Balance" was published in September 2020 issue of Taarangan, the  In-house Journal of Bank of India.

  My Article "IKIGAI Philosophy - The Life with Purpose" published in "Aryavart Darpan the Inhouse Magazine of our Aryavart Bank

  UBUNTU and Corona Pandemic – Unique Lasting Lesson S.B.Singh, Chairman Aryavart Bank & General Manager Bank of India Ubuntu is a socio philosophical concept derived from African culture of oneness. The guiding philosophy of this culture is, “I am because we are” thereby focusing on the social living based on the foundations of mutual sharing and caring. A simple anthropological study has eloquently described the beauty of this culture, which goes as: An Anthropologist arranged a game for African tribal children and placed a basket of sweets at a distance of hundred meters from the children. The anthropologist announced that all sweets will be given to the child who runs fast and reaches the sweets first. He commanded ready, steady and go. The response of the children was unexpected for the researcher. What children did was unique? They held the hands of each other and ran together towards the sweets, divided the sweets equally among themselves and enjoyed the prize collec...

  Workforce Migration – Emerging Horizons Reported by:  banking |Updated: August 4, 2020 Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Facebook Messenger Share Workforce migration is the phenomenon, which can be traced with the age-old evolution of the human civilization. In the initial stages, it was because of the biological, physiological and safety needs of group living followed by social needs culminating into developmental economic and actualisation needs, which has very beautifully been described by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as under: Maslow’s Need Hierarchy   With the growth and development of human societies, human beings keep on aspiring for higher order developmental needs as lower order needs get satisfied thereby unlocking the individual potential of growth and creativity. The context of thesocial and economic developmental needs kept on unfolding itself in myriad ways with two polar extremes: the affluent upper strata and bottom lowest strata of the society. The affl...