Human Resources Management - United Commercial Bank

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Identify the Training Needs:

Generally the HR department of UCB figures out which employee needs training and what skills do he/she needs to work on. The management also considers the organizational context when they perform cost-benefit analysis. Moreover, lots of emphasizes are given on the actual task itself. Each task needs tailored development scheme. For that, they consult with the experts and the supervisors.

Performance appraisal: Mostly an employee’s training need is figured out through performance appraisal, which occurs annually in UCB. It is evaluate base on the company’s goals. Over the year the employees are given with various kinds of targets and UCB ask their employees to achieve them. Moreover at the end of the year in the branches the branch manager and in head office the supervisors evaluate their employees in a graphic rating scale where they setup a benchmark and the employee needs to achieve that.

Training Design:

After setting the training need HR department design training program for their employees. Usually the top management formulates the design and the model of the training program by looking at the objective of the program. Most important part is that they devote a lot of efforts to select the appropriate trainer that is crucial in designing the program.

Development and Implementation:

The techniques that are usually followed for training development are not so popular in the context of Bangladesh and that's makes the methods difficult to implement. While interviewing HR department they mostly emphasized on their in class training method, moreover they also provide training while the employees are in job, as well as moving them from on department to another.

On the job training: This is the most common method that is used for employee training and development. However it is less costly to operate. As it is learning by doing in UCB supervisors monitor and guide the individual for successful implementation of the skill development projects/assignments.

Job rotation: It is one of the effective and traditional methods of training. UCB rotates branches of the employees so that they can get an idea about dealing with different situation and customers, moreover how they can over come problems.

In class lecture: This method is the most common training program on UCB’s training culture. A very renowned training institute BIBM plays a vital role on training employees. While it is determine that an employee needs training UCB design a program with the institute and there are some certified bankers who train the employees for their betterment.

Monitoring and coaching: UCBL do provide “mentoring” and “coaching” service for some “potential employees”. When an employee needs special attention, for example when he/she gets added responsibility, mentoring is being provided.

Off the job training: UCB also provides their employees training by giving them opportunities to attend different types of outside seminar related to their job. They also plan strategic planning program for the executives, where they plan one day training as well as some refreshment program.

Evaluating the Training Effort:

For evaluating the training program supervisors monitor the overall progress of an employee after some period of the training process. Programs that did not yield satisfactory results were forced to change in the later periods. The contents are also changed and the management tries to bring newer techniques in the future trainings.

One employee answered in the questionnaire, when asked to comment about any aspect of the training process that can be helpful in the future, one employee answered that the evaluation phase needs to be re-designed and it should have a formal structure. The employee also said that the evaluation process should be such that it considers and takes into account the employee’s background, opinion about the training, and a detail description of why a particular training process failed to result in desired end.

Recommendation

UCBL has extremely wonderful and systematical working techniques. To recommend UCBL is quite difficult thing for me as a researcher. The HR functions add a lot of value to the organization. The new changing HR professionals carry with new responsibilities and confronts. So few recommendations we would like to make for the betterment of UCBL are given below:

- UCBL should provide motivational training at the entry level instead of after one year of joining.

- At UCBL training is provided in a formal way. Along with formal training they should provide informal training in a friendly environment to make the training programs more effective.

- Employee trainings and workshops should be administered in order to give them knowledge and professionalism in customer interactions. They should increase the number of training programs and workshops.

- Employees should be encouraged to enroll for MBA/EMBA programs and the banks should provide educational plans to improve employee skills and enhance bank’s performance.

- Only the head office has HR department and all the activities are controlled by the head office. So if there any HR problems rise the employee needs to wait for a long time, as the department is not structured.