How Do You Create Effective KRAs for Bank Staff Like Branch Managers and Clerks?

Respected Members,

I am working as an HR Manager for an Urban Cooperative Bank. I am on the lookout to create KRAs for bank staff, i.e., Branch Managers, Accounts Officer, Passing Officer, Clerks, Loans/Credits Manager, etc. Kindly assist with inputs.

You may first collect and collate data about the jobs/tasks involved in respect of all cadres of staff. This will be helpful for you in framing their job descriptions. Once the job description is prepared, you can create Key Result Areas (KRAs) for each category of personnel for the purpose of their annual performance appraisal and review.

Dear Jaydeep Das,

To design the KRAs, one has to study the systems and processes of the company or that department. While studying the systems and processes, one has to understand what is the input for that department and what is the output. The drivers for KRAs are quality, quantity, cost, customer satisfaction, capacity utilization, delivery time, or turnaround time, and so on. One has to design the KRAs based on these drivers.

However, designing the KRAs is the job of a Business Head or even the MD of the company. As an HR Manager, your job is to ensure that the process of the Performance Appraisal (PA) is implemented meticulously.

For Mr RK Nair:

You have suggested designing the KRAs based on the Job Description (JD). However, designing the KRAs requires different expertise altogether. One has to be a measurement expert. Not all HR Managers have that expertise. During my consulting services on PMS, I have seen that those who spent their lifetime in a particular department could not design the KRAs even after the training.

For example, how many HR Managers from the manufacturing sector are assigning Inventory Turnover Ratio (ITR) as KRA to their purchase or sales managers is a point to moot. Keeping aside the assignment of this KRA, how many even understand what ITR is, is another point to moot. Therefore, it is better to hire an external consultant.

By the way, KRAs can be designed from the JDs. However, in this method, there is a risk of putting the focus on the persons rather than systems and processes. What if we end up rewarding the people at the cost of the organization? Who will be responsible for that?

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

I once again respond to the query raised by the poster and the advice/suggestion given by Mr. Dinesh Divekar, our learned expert in the field. While many of his suggestions are based on management principles, we need to make suggestions based on today's scenario followed by establishments, practically. I do agree with Mr. Divekar that the framing of KRAs is based on 'quality, quantity, cost, customer satisfaction, capacity utilization, delivery time or turnaround time, and so on.' To further add, efficiency rate, resource utilization rate, time study, motion study, etc.

In a typical organization, all these areas are followed, studied, and reported by industrial engineering people.

In the above-given scenario, that is in a bank, bank managers, credit officers/managers, and accounts officers need not have to go into detail on this.

As Mr. Divekar will appreciate, the purpose of framing KRAs (or KPAs) is to measure the performance of the staff, what are the major achievements by them during the period of review, what are the shortfalls/shortcomings, etc. It is based on KRAs and performance measurement based on KRAs, TNI (Training Need Identification) will be made and processed, and accordingly, training is imparted to the required employees.