Best Employers 2.0, Bajaj Finance Limited

Bajaj Finance Limited, the lending arm of Bajaj Finserv group, is one of the most diversified NBFCs in the Indian market catering to more than 6 million customers across the country. Headquartered in Pune, the company’s product offering includes consumer durable loans, lifestyle finance, personal loans, loan against property, small business loans, home loans, credit cards, two-wheeler and three-wheeler loans, construction equipment loans, loan against securities and rural finance, which includes gold loans and vehicle refinancing loans. Bajaj Finance Limited prides itself for holding the highest credit rating of FAAA/Stable for any NBFC in the country today. The company has been profitable year-on-year, and has posted commendable revenue growth of 54 per cent in the last financial year. Its financial indicators – NPA is only 0.2 per cent and Capital Adequacy ratio stands at 17.5 per cent – are healthy. The top leadership wants profitability to grow at an exponentially faster rate and diversify into more product lines.

In order to improve profitability, HR follows a metrics-driven approach towards performance. It is based on the philosophy that things which can be measured can be improved. The performance of every employee is measured on a variety of parameters, each of which has measurable outputs. These metrics, including individual performance metrics, are published on a monthly basis to instill transparency in the system. Another aspect of HR’s strategy is ‘Do More, Earn More’, which rewards employees commensurately for the efforts they put into their work. The third element of the people strategy is ‘Stretch is a way of life and challenge ‘Status Quo’. The business requires employees who are willing to go beyond the call of duty to support its high growth rate. Hence, HR plans for annual action learning projects, in which cross functional teams are developed and are each allocated a business issue to work on. This is aimed at improving the company’s operations, re-designing systems and processes to save time and cost, etc.

HR invests 2 per cent of total revenues (PAT) in building employee capability to enable them to deliver better business results. A learning academy, which is heavily research focused, is been set up for this. HR rewards high performers to drive business. Employees are provided higher compensation, bonus, foreign trips for themselves etc. to reinforce the desired behavior.

Pure Life is the company’s health and wellness program, which has created the maximum employee wow over the past two years.