Ujjivan SFB’s commitment to attracting and retaining quality talent remained the cornerstone to its people strategy in FY 2025-26. The year’s focus was on achieving higher productivity benchmarks and optimising span of control throughout the organisation. Right-sizing and efficiency measures were implemented, resulting in disciplined workforce expansion and increased outputs. Total headcount grew to over 26,500 employees, supported by the onboarding of more than 2,100 incremental hires.

Hiring was strategically aligned to business priorities, with emphasis on Branch Banking, Housing Loans, Micro Mortgages, Micro Banking, Gold Loans, and various Credit and Collection roles, ensuring talent deployment supported growth engines. Targeted hiring also strengthened the Data Science and Decision Making teams.

Workforce stability improved, reflected in a joining ratio exceeding 83% and lowest ever drop-out with less than 17%, addressing a significant industry challenge. The organisation saw a lower voluntary infant attrition below 3.5% due to structured success profile hiring, early-stage employee engagement, and enhanced supervisory training. Overall voluntary attrition moderated to 18.6%, one of the best in the banking industry, indicating improved alignment between role expectations and employee fit.

Workforce expansion underscored the Bank’s inclusionled approach, with 54% of hires from Tier 4 locations, strengthening local capabilities and enabling greater penetration in underbanked markets.

Capacity building is about strengthening employee’s skills, knowledge, and adaptability to meet evolving industry demands. In today’s dynamic financial landscape, the Bank needs talents who are agile, tech-savvy, and capable of driving innovation while maintaining trust and compliance. In lines with the same, Ujjivan SFB prioritised capacity building, to strengthen the institution, and cultivate a culture of continuous learning and innovation that fuels sustainable growth.

The Bank’s digital learning ecosystem continued to expand, with 99% active Learning Management System (LMS) usage and the launch of 39 e-learning courses during the year, alongside structured learning pathways aligned to evolving business needs.

Diversity, equity and inclusion were embedded within the Bank’s people framework, with a focus on improving representation, ensuring equitable practices and enabling participation across all roles. The Bank adopted a structured approach with measurable outcomes, ensuring consistent application of DEI principles throughout the employee lifecycle.

During FY 2025-26, the Bank hired more than 1,900 women, bringing overall female representation to 19.68%. Women comprised 20% of top management roles reporting to the Managing Director, and Board-level representation stood at 56%, reflecting progress in leadership diversity. The Bank also advanced inclusion through dedicated hiring programmes for Persons With Disabilities (PWD) and by promoting generational diversity across the organisation.

Gender Inclusion was promoted through targeted programmes such as UNPAUSE and WISE, which offered return-ship opportunities and supported leadership readiness for women employees. These initiatives were aligned with structured promotion frameworks, role-based assessments, and pay benchmarking practices to ensure consistency and fairness in career progression.

Workplace practices were aligned to support inclusion in an operational and consistent manner.

The Bank continues to strengthen workplace safety and employee participation through targeted interventions, including safety awareness initiatives. This approach is supported by continuous feedback and internal monitoring. These efforts are reflected in consistently strong Trust Index scores across employee groups, indicating a workplace environment anchored in fairness and inclusion.

Employee experience at the Bank is managed through a lifecycle-based approach, integrating onboarding, performance management, engagement, and recognition to ensure consistency across all. This approach enables the Bank to be responsive to employee needs at every stage of their journey. During the year, the Bank strengthened its listening architecture to enable continuous feedback collection and structured response mechanisms. Multiple platforms were leveraged to institutionalise two-way communication and improve visibility of employee concerns and expectations.

Recognition and engagement frameworks were further expanded to reinforce performance, behaviour and cultural alignment across the organisation. These initiatives are designed to acknowledge contributions consistently while strengthening employee connect with the organisation.

Digital enablement continued to play a central role in improving employee experience. HRMS-driven processes supported real-time execution of hiring, onboarding, and employee services, resulting in improved turnaround times and operational efficiency. These enhancements contributed to a 99% grievance resolution rate, underscoring improved responsiveness and service delivery across employee interactions.