On The Incentive And Restraint Mechanism Of Counter Service Personnel In Commercial Banks

Counter service personnel are the personnel who provide service for individual client at the banking outlets, normally called "Bank Teller" (the personnel who provide service for corporate client is not within the discussion of this article). The responsibility of the Counter service personnel is to manage banking business such as deposits, bill payment services, foreign exchange transactions and remittance.The requirements for Counter service personnel in ordinary service industry are decent appearance, capable speaker and with good manner. But the requirements for Counter service personnel in commercial banks are far more than this, which is determined by the specific characteristics of Counter service personnel. The job of Counter service personnel in commercial has five characteristics:1. High requirement for vocational skills. The Counter service personnel must be familiar with different kinds of operational systems of the banking outlets and the procedures of different financial business.2. High training costs and long training period. The Counter service personnel need at least 1-2 months training, which encloses half-month condense training, in order to work individually. What's more, commercial banks need to train the Counter service personnel on site in order to keep them adapted to the development of commercial banks.3. High risk of job. When Counter service personnel operate the account at the request of clients, any mistake may need to the considerable loss of commercial banks or clients.4. Various employment forms. Due to different development of commercial banks, there exist different employment forms such as short-term employee, long-term employee, labor employee and etc.5. High proportion of staff. Due to large amount of outlets, the Counter service personnel has great share of the staff in commercial banks, normally more than 30%. Based on the history of the development of commercial Banks in China, there exists various incentive and restraint mechanisms of Counter service personnel, their income gap is even bigger. Along with the development of commercial Banks in China and the strengthening function of the banking outlets, the responsibility of the Counter service personnel is gradually widened and the importance is improved consequently. In the meantime, along with the issuance of the new labor contract law, commercial banks cannot fire Counter service personnel at will and the "one-year contract signing" method is not feasible. As result, it is of great importance for commercial banks to set up effective incentive and restraint mechanism and improve the efficiency of the Counter service personnel based on the existing personnel.This article reviews the history of the Counter service personnel in commercial banks, analyzes the current situation of the incentive and restraint mechanism, taking a large state-owned commercial Banks as the main line. Then this article puts forward a new view on improving the Personnel structure and salary distribution and perfecting incentive and restraint mechanisms, combined with the future trend of development of commercial Banks.This article argues that, in order to improve the incentive and restraint mechanism of commercial banks, it is necessary to clarify the duty of Counter service personnel. Only if the duty is clarified, the proper recruitment can be made. Only if the duty is clarified, the salary structure can be adjusted according to job features. Only if the duty is clarified, the matching incentive and restraint mechanisms can be set up.This article argues by theoretical and empirical combination of methods.