Kundapur Vaman Kamath, ICICI Bank - Building Gender Balanced Business

What are the key circumstances that led to the building of an organisation in India based on equal opportunities for all employees?

As I look back to 1996 when I came into the Bank, I realised that we had to de-risk ourselves. All the rules of the game that we knew till then were being changed. The economy was opened up; scale was coming in; in technology there was a paradigm shift; quality became foremost; and cost was all important. All the equations were rapidly changing. We were then a single-product company. So we were like entrepreneurs when we took our first few steps. We were about 40 years old then. If I then look back from 1996 to 2009, a key aspect of our transformation was that the Group had become an entrepreneurial institution. Crucially, as we did this, issues of leadership and building our human capital came to the fore. The clear take-away from this was that as you build your cadre of employees, you need to ensure that there is complete meritocracy. And if you need to bring in meritocracy, you then need to build an equal opportunity organisation.

Where did you draw the conviction and inspiration to build such a model?

I must confess that there was no model or a set goal for building an equal opportunity organisation. But it is a goal that was actually fairly plain to us and the truth is that, to create equal opportunity you need to truly believe that everyone is equal. Once you believe that, then things fall in place.

For example, in the recruitment process there is no bias that this is a job that only a man can do or a woman can do. The moment you drop that bias you are one step into building equal opportunity.

Do you have some examples of this lack of bias in recruitment?

Once we were opening a new branch and many people including women were working late. I was told that there could be certain challenges that women could be exposed to if they worked late. I replied that it is up to the woman to take the opportunity and that if there is a problem then she can come and tell you or me. My thinking was that, “Why do you want to make an a priori assumption that she will not be able to handle late hours at work?” I think this sort of example then sets in motion a process from which we can build a truly equal opportunity company. It does not happen just like that. You have to make it happen.

Do you have another example of this?

Yes, this goes back 12 years when I had just come into the Bank as CEO. At that time, we were doing various appraisals of senior people which the Board then approved. We spent one whole month doing appraisals. We also had in the appraisals department at that time about 30-40% women employees. In one instance when there were several people around the table, I asked some of the women employees: How long have you worked every day during the last one month? They said, “Maybe until about 1.00-2.00am in the morning.” Then I asked them how they went home. They said, they took a cab. I persisted and enquired whether they were not worried about travelling at night. They looked at me blankly as if to say, “What are you talking about?” I think that was a good answer.

What did you conclude from this?

That they were not worried about the late hours, so why should we assume that they would be? I must also add that at that time, there was a slight law and order problem in Mumbai. So I quietly asked the company to provide transportation facilities for those members of staff who worked after 10 pm. They did not ask for it, but we went ahead and took some steps because there could have been a security challenge for them and we did not want to have to seek a solution after the event, if we could prevent it.

So you don’t treat women differently to men?

My approach has been that if there is a challenge, quietly work towards easing that problem. Other than that, assume that there will be equal opportunity. I think that has worked to our advantage.

How do you ensure women have an equal chance to rise in your organisation?

We ruthlessly administer meritocracy. When we recruit, we do that with true merit in mind and then take the intermediate steps that I mentioned before, and later if there are any challenges, we take steps to overcome them. For example, around 1996-97, I remember that Chanda Kochhar told us that she needed to take time off to look after her baby. And when she came back, she did so hitting the road running and has kept running thereafter.

“…as you build your cadre of employees, you need to ensure that there is complete meritocracy. And if you need to bring in meritocracy, you then need to build an equal opportunity organisation.”

Few companies in India have become gender neutral – is there a cultural context that we need to be aware of?

Yes but the issue is a universal one. I don’t think it has anything to do with India in particular. In the cultural context, I would say that the less positive corporate approach comes from the assumption that there are certain things a man can do and there are certain things a women can do. Additionally, there is also a belief that women have certain constraints. But I believe these are all cultural tags. You have to get these tags out of the way if you truly want to build an equal opportunity workplace.

Do you support quotas for employing more women at work?

I don’t think that is a good strategy. You have to start with first principles. Quotas will not work unless you re-engineer the whole [talent management] process to build a pool of what I would call gender neutral talent. That is what I think needs to be done in workplaces.

Over the years, succession planning has been relatively smooth and proactive at ICICI with a large number of women managers taking up leadership positions. How have you been able to achieve this?

I would think that in this area, there has been a lot of learning from GE. The process of succession planning starts about two years after an employee joins and thereafter you subtly push people into positions where they need to take decisions or several decisions. You then filter the outcomes and take a view on their leadership. I would think that in every organisation at different points in time, different qualities of managers come to the fore. I think it would not be right to say that one quality or a set of qualities in a particular sequence are ideal. I guess that we put out those quality attributes and then we start observing and evaluating people. Frankly, I do not think there is any other way.

You have a number of stars at the top level, particularly women stars. What is your approach in managing stars? Because that creates its own set of leadership and gender challenges.

Initially, I thought it would be a huge challenge to manage stars. But I must say that it was much easier, significantly easier than what I had initially thought. The reason is that stars manage themselves. When we started calling people stars and putting them on an accelerated track based on meritocracy, I thought that this would create a whole of set of challenges in managing disappointments. Actually, it worked completely the other way. When a star is not recognised as a star, the person actually seeks out [new opportunities] and migrates out [to other jobs]. But for this, the processes should be very open and transparent and then the person will actually become an ambassador for your company. Once this happens and the collection of deadwood is removed, the organisation is rejuvenated and refreshed.

Apart from meritocracy, what are the other effects of gender equality?

Meritocracy to me is a tool to achieve gender neutrality and equal opportunity. The true benefit of this is much wider to me and of much greater significance. The reason is that otherwise you would have ended up evaluating only half the population in the company and not getting the benefit of the other half. Instead, you now have a 100% strong organisation. You then truly have a much better organisation because you have had a much wider selection process. In this way, you also can mainstream a much wider platform of tasks.

In other words, there is a true competitive advantage for an organisation to have a strategy of equal opportunity?

Yes, I think there is a huge advantage. Otherwise, we would not have brought in people into the overall equation.