information technology and media, have given rise to a supply demand imbalance. today, these new industries are competing with the old for talent and have triggered the need for banks to look afresh not only at their recruitment strategies but also how to develop and retain their talent. thirdly, there is the issue of ownership. while organizations own physical and financial assets, their ownership rights, however, do not extend to people. in indian financial sector, in the pre - reforms days, employment bonding, especially in the public sector, worked on what was termed the “ psychological contract ” or the “ loyalty contract ” wherein long - term employment was co - terminus with employee loyalty. this, in today ’ s world, has been seriously undermined, spurred not in the least by a spurt in job opportunities. the old values of loyalty have eroded and greater demand for talent has changed the playing field for the search and retention of personnel. this is the new reality that the banks in india, among others, have to contend with. importantly, effective recruiting is the beginning of effective retention. matching between tasks and talents is a challenging problem and it is essential for allocational efficiency that people get allocated to right occupations. refashioning the recruitment process may well therefore be the precursor of an effective talent management strategy. this may include identification of key positions and turnover risks associated with these positions, and competency / behavioural - based selection criteria that support the retention strategy and business drivers. only a carefully designed and integrated set of initiatives that allow the employee to align himself with the organisational goals and objectives, map competencies for diverse work areas, build up capacities through a well - crafted and sustained strategy and draw out latent possibilities optimally would ensure emergence of leadership talent that is critical to any organisation ’ s prosperity and is therefore a central element of talent management. the aim is to align the current and future talents of individuals with the strategic challenges of our business. so while employees need to understand how to be more effective in their current roles, deliver specific business challenges, and pull together a personal development plan for shaping future careers, organizations too have to strategize how best to utilize the people ’ s talents and identify areas for internal development necessary for ensuring future success. engaged as it is in the critical exercise of getting the right people for the right job for organizations across the banking sector, the ibps therefore has a central role to play in the broad mandate of talent management in the indian banking system. not

recent years have put a premium on appropriate manpower planning and personnel development, indeed the human resource function generally. ensuring that the banks can recruit and retain appropriately qualified and experienced staff is at the heart of this challenge. this is made increasingly difficult by developments outside the financial sector and competition for key personnel even from international agencies. in india too, banks and banking have changed substantially over the years. as we view matters in retrospect, one of the major landmark events which constituted strategic inflexion points in the history of indian financial sector has been the reforms process that gained momentum in the early 1990s. these reforms have heralded a dramatic shift in the way banks functioned and operated in india. the changed overall environment and the internal compulsions to generate and sustain faster policy responses have given rise to the quest for greater efficiency and the need to reorient the banking practices. this unmistakable urgency of realigning our organizational resources has indeed altered the way we view the whole gamut of key issues relating to our human resources. in such an environment, sometimes somewhat stylistically termed as “ war for talent ”, even public sector banks can perhaps no longer take a life time employment for granted. issues relating to how to attract talented people, how to nurture them, how to develop them and give them the necessary space have now, therefore, moved to the centre stage and today constitute the major concerns that we may need to address adequately in the near and medium term. while these issues have always been important, it is just that the imperatives to address them squarely in substance were never so compelling. there have been broadly three catalytic forces that have brought about this changed perception of human resources : first, as the widespread use of the personal computer and the advent of the internet in the 1990s attained a critical mass, it marked a specific game - changing point which ushered in the information age. in this age, the intangible assets such as intellectual capital and talent have in a sense supplanted hard assets of the industrial age such as capital, factories and inventories. the new reality is that people are increasingly the principal assets of any organization and institutions are dependent not just on the sum total of their individual human capital, but also on how effectively they are able to draw out the best from their talent bank. secondly, in india as elsewhere, a host of new industries, some sector - specific like new generation indian private sector banks and foreign banks and other sector - neutral like companies in the fields of