Abstract

In 2006, when OP Bhatt (Bhatt) was appointed Chairman of India’s leading bank State Bank of India (SBI), the bank was confronting a host of problems. Though it was the market leader, it was facing tough competition from private players such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, etc. It was looking at a steady erosion in market share and its growth was slower than that of its competitors. Its ranking in the list of top global banks was also slipping. The company was unable to attract young or affluent customers and its brand image was perceived to be old and staid. The top management team led by Bhatt recognized the need for a transformation. They identified areas that needed to be transformed and communicated the new transformation agenda to all the people in the organization. The top management realized that to achieve the transformation they sought, getting the grassroots level employees on board was extremely important. So a massive internal communication initiative called Parivartan (which means transfor-mation/change) was launched. The initiative was aimed at obtaining the support and acceptance of employees for the change initiatives undertaken by the bank, and explaining to them why change was necessary. The project also sought to bring about a change in the attitude and approach of the employees and to help them develop a more customer-centric approach. Accor-ding to SBI, the program succeeded in achieving its objective. Industry observers too appreciated the initiative and said that Bhatt had succeeded in changing the employees’ approach to work, which in turn, had led to the bank performing well and maintaining its market leadership position in the Indian banking sector.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the issues and challenges in change management
• Understand the issues and challenges in communicating a change initiative
• Study the Parivartan internal communication initiative and understand how SBI tried to change the attitude and mindset of its grassroots level employees
• and Appre-ciate the importance of HR in an organi-zational transformation initiative.

Keywords

Transformation, Change management, Communicating change, Internal communication, Project Parivartan, Training, business process re-engineering, Market leader, Competition, Banking, Customer-centric, State Bank of India, SBI, ICICI, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank