1.

1 The origin of the assignment:

This assignment is prepared for Mr. Azizur Rahman, course instructor of MBA program, Faculty of Business at ASA University Bangladesh. This assignment is prepared as a partial requirement of Human Resource Management (HRM - 501) course during the spring 2012 and submitted at the same semester. Following the standard procedure and instruction given by the course instructor does this formal report.

1.2 Objective: Primary objective:

The primary objective of this assignment is to analyze the Training and development module for ROBI (a leading mobile network operator).

Analyzing objective:
To give detailed information about recruiting, selection, orientation, training and development process of the company To focus on the major activities and modes of recruiting, selection, orientation, training and development process and under which division these work Show how this activities relate with the organization overall strategy and objective To know how affectively these activity work for the company To focus on the extent and nature of any formal evaluation of the activitys effectiveness

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1.3 Methodology: Primary & Secondary Data

The data and information has been taken from books, catalogs of ROBI and also from the Internet.

1.4 Limitation:
At the time when I prepare my assignment I faced some limitations. These are as follows:

1. There is very short data in respect of training and development module 2. Some information remained withheld to preserve privacy of the company 3. Lake of secondary data

4. I dont have got too much time for preparing the assignment because of my job and final exam

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2. Background Information:
Robi Axiata Limited is a joint venture company between Axiata Group Berhad, Malaysia and NTT DOCOMO INC, Japan. It was formerly known as Telekom Malaysia International (Bangladesh) which commenced operations in Bangladesh in 1997 with the brand name ROBI. On 28th March 2010, the service name was rebranded as Robi and the company came to be known as Robi Axiata Limited.

To ensure leading-edge technology, Robi draws from the international expertise of Axiata and NTT DOCOMO INC. It supports 2G voice, CAMEL Phase II & III and GPRS/EDGE service with high speed internet connectivity. Its GSM service is based on a robust network architecture and cutting edge technology such as Intelligent Network (IN), which provides peace-of-mind solutions in terms of voice clarity, extensive nationwide network coverage and multiple global partners for international roaming. It has the widest International Roaming coverage in Bangladesh connecting 600 operators across more than 200 countries. Its customer centric solution includes value added services (VAS), quality customer care, easy access call centers, digital network security and flexible tariff rates.

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2.1 Shareholdings
Robi Axiata Limited is a Joint Venture company between Axiata Group Berhad (70%) and NTT DOCOMO INC. (30%)

Axiata Group Berhad

Axiata is an emerging leader in Asian telecommunications with significant presence in Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Cambodia. In addition, the Malaysian grown holding company has strategic mobile and non-mobile telecommunications operations and investments in India, Singapore, Iran, Pakistan and Thailand. Axiata Group Berhad, including its subsidiaries and associates, has approximately 120 million mobile subscribers in Asia, and is listed on Malaysias stock exchange (Bursa Malaysia).

NTT DOCOMO INC

NTT DOCOMO INC is the world's leading mobile communications company and the largest mobile communications company in Japan. DOCOMO serves over 56 million customers, including 44 million people subscribing to FOMA, launched as the world's first 3G mobile service based on W-CDMA in 2001. DOCOMO also offers a wide variety of leading-edge mobile multimedia services, including i-mode, the world's most popular mobile e-mail/Internet service, used by 48 million people. With the addition of credit-card and other e-wallet functions, DOCOMO mobile phones have become highly versatile tools for daily life. With cutting edge technology and innovative services, DOCOMO is fast becoming a preferred lifestyle choice, continuously expanding its role in its users lives, growing globally throughout Asia, Europe and North America. NTT DOCOMO INC is listed on the Tokyo (9437), London (NDCM) and New York (DCM) stock exchanges.

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2.2 Principles:
Robi Axiata Limited pursues the following guiding Principles for the organization. Emotional : Passionate, Creative, Respectful, Open Functional : Simple, Ethical, Transparent, Ownership As per provided by the company, employees of it are accountable to the following overarching guiding Principles for the organization: 1. Being respectful towards everyone 2. Being trustworthy by action. Being passionate and creative in all we do 3. Keeping things simple in the way we do things 4. Being ethical and transparent 5. Demonstrating individual and collective ownership 6. Practicing an open culture in communication and interaction

2.3 Vision:
To be a leader as a Telecommunication Service Provider in Bangladesh

2.4 Mission:
ROBI aims to be achieving its vision through being number One not only in terms of market share, but also by being an employer of choice with up-to date knowledge and products geared to address the ever changing needs of our budding nation.

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2.5 Theme:
Customer First

2.6 Human Resource Division

ROBI has human resource activity from the very beginning when they first started their operation though earlier they do not have separate HR division. It was working jointly with other division (finance, marketing, administration). The company establishes separate HR Division in January 1998. They have now 21 employees including those who are working in their head of the department. Their HR head quarter is situated at Malaysia.

2.6.1 Importance of HR division in the company:

To run the organization operation properly and to achieve the organizations goals, the organization needs qualified and right employees. HR helps to find the right person for the right job. This is the major work of HR division. Employee recruiting, selection, training, management development, and employee compensation all these things have done under HR division. To achieve their mission they provide effective training program, design attractive compensation package, provide performance appraisal. These entire things are done for finding the appropriate employee for the organization who can assist organization to accomplish its goal.

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2.6.2 Duties and responsibilities of HR division of ROBI:

To perform job Analysis To get engaged with recruiting and conduct initial screening To design the orientation, training and development materials To help in designing organization development activities To work with employees compensation and benefit To provide sufficient information in order to complete the processing of recruitment and selection Duties with Administration sector under ROBI HR Division: 1. Transportation management 2. Protocol 3. Health and safety of the employee

2.6.3 HR Mission:
To be the employer of choice

2.6.4 HR objective:
Providing the right person for the right job Job satisfaction

Career planning and Development Reduce the employee turnover by recruiting and selecting the right person

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2.6.5 ROBI HR Organ gram

HR Division

Recruiting & selection (3 employee)

Training & development (5 employee)

Administratio n (6 employee)

Compensation & benefit (2 employee)

HR Information (4 employee)

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3. Existing Training Strategies in Robi

The training program is a vital link in the process of converting the recruit into productive representatives. The money, which is spent on recruiting and selecting people, may be wasted if their selection is not followed up with the proper training programs. Additionally, experienced reps may not improve or even maintain their productivity if they are not provided with an adequate amount of continual training. So the purpose of training is to relate and improve the specific performance related skills, attitudes, perception and behaviors require peoples success with the state of readiness of the force. As ROBI is the leading provider of telecom services, they always want to serve their best. That is why, they have very strong and effective training department to train the best training to their employees.

At ROBI the top-level management believes that their primary competitive advantage comes from their employees. In the ever-changing mobile industry, all of they must continuously upgrade their skills and knowledge in order to maintain this competitive advantage.

Their training programs are based on the job natures and the performance of the employees. Their goal is to attract, retain and motivate the very best and to do that they support training, development, and business education.

3.1 Why ROBI train their employees?

Primarily, the importance of training stems from the rapid change in the environment. As a developing country, people, in general, are not very aware about the technological changes that are taking place. training basically seek to take human inputs recruited or even existing employees and turn them into productive part of the company. Training programs should be

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taken as a continual, ongoing process, which improve the scenario in different dimensions such as:

I.

Training process is conducted to provide the freshers the basic knowledge which is required to perform their specific job perfectly.

II.

To implement the basic knowledge, ROBI provides practice session for the new employees. ROBI believes on the more practice the more perfect empolyee. Thats why they prefer more the practice session.

III.

Training provides the people with better improved knowledge, working habits, working techniques which are essential part to achieve both employee and company satisfaction and thus retaining them in the long run.

IV.

Training programs also help trainee to develop positive attitude about themselves and company as a whole.

Therefore, training works as one of the most vital weapons to achieve overall, long-run goals of an organization.

3.2 How the training process is conducted?

ROBI uses different training technique depending on the training content, purpose of the training program, participants of the program as well as time required for the completion of the training. The training program of ROBI is conducted before sending the entry level employees to the workstation.

The training need of each employee is analyzed through two processes: TNA : Training Need Analysis SGA : Skill Gap Analysis

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The results of these two processes measures how much training each employee needs.

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3.3 The Training Process:

There are four types of training process: 1. In-house training:

This training is provided through the vendors. Employee supervisors or line managers provide a coaching for the new employees. In coaching, lectures are delivered to provide knowledge related to the specific jobs. A lecture is the best way to present a basic outline of a subject in a shorter time to a larger number of trainees than any of the other techniques. FOR example, when information about ROBIS products, new services, and new findings in the research and company information, market condition is to be given to the trainees then the training department adopts lectures. With this technique, a trainer can handle a higher number of participants and give greater volume of information within a short time period 2. Foreign training:

To implement new technology ROBI have to train their new employees from foreign countries. They have arranged for international training for their employees according their performance .In this case the employee has to sign a Bond assuring the company that he will not leave company next few years. This duration varies based on the training. Employees are mainly send to Malaysia for this higher training. The cost of relocations, the whole expense of food and housing are providing by ROBI Company as long as they are in the abroad for training. 3. Job rotation:

ROBI provide job rotation to the entry-level employees. In this process they dont send their employee of one department to another department for training. What they do is that they just send employee of one branch to another or one region to another. 4. Discussion: In ROBI, when any new system is launched or when there is any need for changing the technique or policies, discussion is used as a training method where both the trainer and the trainees can share their thoughts and opinions. During the leadership training, induction training as training on advanced

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selling skill; the training department usually prefers discussion. Sometimes, when cases are given to the trainees to solve the problem and suggest recommendation, group discussion also takes place among the trainees.

3.4 Supervision of training by ROBI HR department

Though the training programs are provided by different departments, the overall supervision is upon the HR department. They look after the overall process and do some routine functions. They are as follows:

Prepare, maintain and update training related database Prepare career development plan Prepare induction training manual/modules Evaluate training program Make agreement between ROBI and employees for overseas training To communicate with different local training institutions To communicate with trainers/instructors

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4. Development Program in ROBI:

Management development is any attempt to managerial performance by imparting knowledge, changing attitudes, or increasing skills. For the past few years management developments focus has been shifting from preparing managers to fill higher level slots to preparing them to meet the challenges of managing in past paced environment. Increasingly, therefore, the emphasis is on developing a managers ability to learn and make decisions under conditions of rapid change. The management development program may be aimed at filling a specific position, such as CEO, perhaps with one of two potential candidates. When it is an executive position to be filled, the process is usually called succession planning. Succession planning refers to the process through which senior level openings are planned for and eventually filled.

4.1 Why Development is needed for the employees?

When ROBI selects their own employees to fill the vacant higher positions they look for the employee who are ready to get the higher position. As they do not follow the personnel replacement chart or position replacement card they have to make those employees ready to acquire the higher position ROBI conducts development program for them. It helps those employees to have the ability to take decisions those are required in the higher-level position. Those who deserve the higher position receive a development process conducted by ROBI but its true that their development programs are not well organized though they take some necessary steps for developing their employees who are working inside the organization.

4.2 How the development process is conducted?

Before starting a development program they analyze the employees to what extent they need the development to be fit for the higher position. To analyze this they go through SGA (skill gap analysis). On the basis of the SGA every employee has to have a yearly 40 hours development process. It depends on the current skill of those employees. Every

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employee of ROBI (from manager to managing director) goes through a career succession planning. Through this career succession planning employees develops their skills to deserve the vacant higher position.

4.3 The development process:

To conduct a development process ROBI follows the following on the jobs techniques: 1. Job rotation:

ROBI provide job rotation to the managerial employees also. But the idea of ROBIs job rotation policy is limited only to the department. That means they dont send their employees of one department to another department. What they do is that they just send employee of one branch to another or one region to another. For example, for job rotation they send Marketing manager of Chittagong branch to the Marketing department of Dhaka branch as a manager which position is vacant, but they dont send a marketing manager to the sells department or HR department or any other branches.

2. Junior Board:

It is used for operational decisions in most cases. But sometimes it is used to take very few strategic decisions (example: to design training program). To attend junior board all employees should already receive the initial coaching. In junior board top level managers have a sit with the sub-ordinates and encourage them to provide possible suggestions regarding a decision. The sub-ordinates try to give

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suggestions through brainstorming using the knowledge provided in the initial coaching.

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5. Weakness of Existing Strategy

Though ROBI follows most of the rules and regulations of standard training programs but still they have some problems with their existing training and development programs. Some of the problems are listed below: -

They dont have action-learning program. As a result employees dont get scope to increase their project skill and to know about the problems of another department. They dont concentrate on off the job training. We know, off the job training is sometimes more important to know about the job. Review system is not strong enough. As a result it becomes quite difficult to understand how effective the training was. Lack of motivation in the training side. ROBI dont motivate that much while employees took training. They took training just like they are doing their regular jobs. Less scope of developing for the senior employees. Senior employee specially the aged employees dont have sufficient idea about the changing environment of technology.

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Some of their weaknesses in different strategies are given bellow:

(1) Turnover ratio

High turnover ratio is found in some previous years. Though they have high pay scale but there may be some internal reasons, which causes the employees to leave the job.

(2) Development process is not well organized Development process in ROBI is not so well organized. Every senior employee gets only 40 hours development program each year, which is not enough for development. They dont follow action-learning process that may be very effective to develop the employees.

(3) Some lacks of training program They also dont follow off the job training

(4) Some lacks in recruiting and selection process They do not follow any personnel replacement chart They do not promote work samples testing to evaluate a candidate ROBI doesnt use any method to test each employees personality ROBI doesnt follow background checking for selecting candidates as it becomes expensive for the company

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They do not follow appraisal interview as well as situational interview

6. Suggestive Training and Development:

In order to solve the problems with the existing training and development system, we recommend the following suggestion. The ways of implementing those recommendations is also discussed. a) From the problem part, we become able to know that ROBI dont follow action learning training and off the job training. We would not recommend to implement action learning training. But ROBI should provide off the job training. Because, for some sectors or jobs off the job training is more valuable than on the job training. In order to implement off the job training in the company they can follow those steps: o o Select the sectors and employee for this training A time horizon for the training. It will be selected by the discussion with the employees. o Then the trainer would be selected. They dont need to hire new trainer for this, they can provide off the job training with their existing trainer. o o Sufficient training materials should be provided to the employees. The progress of the trainee should be checked.

b) They should motivate employee to give more concentration on their training. The reason is that motivations dont cost enough money, but it helps to the employees to learn rapidly. If they are motivated and learn the job then not only they will be benefited, at the same time they will serve the company with their best effort. In order to motivate them, ROBI can provide them various incentives, like- informing them about the benefit of the training, how it will help them, etc.

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c) Senior employees should also be developed always. We already mentioned that in ROBI senior employees do not get enough facilities and time to develop themselves. As a result they always have lack of idea about the technological change. In order to provide training for the senior employees ROBI may need to provide different sessions like action learning, case study method, management games. So, it may cost ROBI. But in the long run, they will be benefited.

7. Module
A primary objective of many training programs is to teach the force how to be more productive. Usually, a persons productivity will increase with experience. But if s training can substitute for some of the needed experience, higher productivity levels should be reached earlier. The most important objectives of training program are shown in the given diagram:

Improved communicati on

Improved selfmanagemen t

Increased productivi ty

Training program objectives of ROBI

Improve d morale

Improved customer relations

Figure: Training Program 20 | P a g e

8. Instruction Sheet
Training gives new employees the skills required to perform their jobs perfectly. So make the training program perfect ROBI plans some steps, which are helpful for the fresher. ROBI follows the following steps to conduct training.

8.1 Who should be trained?

As newly hired person doesnt have enough knowledge about the company and his job, training can help them in this regard. Although experienced people have knowledge about their job still they need training to cope with the changing world.

8.2 Recognizing training needs:

ROBI mainly follows need based training. That is, whenever the supervisor finds that his/her subordinates need sufficient training; they immediately take necessary steps and arrange training programs. The supervisors use several methods to assess training needs. They are as follows:

Performance testing Job analysis Force survey Performance survey Observation

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8.3 When training should take place:

Timing of the training has two basic attitudes. Some organizations prefer training first than go for the job, where as some organizations want training based on after job performance.

In ROBI, the Training programs are made as yearly basis for providing training on techniques and skills for all level of their employees including the ones from other departments because they believe that in a organization everybody needs to have skill. The marketing department, sales department and HR department altogether do the overall plan. This yearly plan for training is enhanced by the monthly meetings held in every spots where ROBI has subsidiaries. These meetings are referred to as Precycle Briefing meeting. These meetings try to find out in which areas and for which employees training is needed. In the beginning of the training, expectations from each participant in the training program are assessed and according to that the managers design the content of the training.

At every meeting, each department discuss and analysis the performance of the worker of their department in the past month and identifies whether they are performing accordingly or not. If someone fails to perform and cannot reach the objective then the need for training arises.

Plan of every individual department also has significant impact on the training plan because only proper training can ensure the implementation of the achievement of the objective of the plan. plan. The yearly plan for providing training makes sure that it can be helpful for the

The training department plans the training before 2-3 months from the time intended to provide the training to the employees. The Training Manager is responsible for preparing the budgeting, plan on which training for whom in all department, planned actions, and also give guidelines to the Human Resource Department for recruitment and selection. However, Training Manager specifically works with the related training. According to the companys perspective, everybody should have knowledge about their related job. So, the Training

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Manager plans what type of training is required for new recruits and the existing personnel and how the training is going to change the current performance and will help in achieving the desired level of performance. Both the managers analyze the performance of the trainee after attending the training program taken place in the last month and set strategy for the next months training plan.

8.4 Where training should take place:

Training can be provided in both centralized and decentralized manner. Centralized training occurs when all the people come to one central location (often home office) to have training. On the other hand decentralized training of people is usually held in field or regional offices.

ROBI

follows

both

centralized

and

decentralized

training.

General

management training program for the top level executives are mainly held in the home office because centralized school normally has more formal facilities for training than are available in the field. As top-level executives need more advanced training, thats why, it usually held in the head-office. On the other hand, those whose works are mainly field based, they often have to go with their senior people to the field, have to do on-the-job training, attend seminars, conferences etc to increase their outer knowledge.

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8.5 Who should be the trainer?

A trainer is the person on whom the success or failure of the whole training program is dependent. There are three types trainers by, they are1. Regular line executives, 2. Staff personnel and 3. Outside specialists.

Because each has certain advantages, it is not unusual to find organizations using all these three types as well as using one or two types. It basically depends on the size of the firm, the characteristics of the product line, the focus of the training where the sessions are held etc.

ROBI has both line executive trainer and outside specialists. The HR manager and senior supervisor usually train their own force. In that way, the trainer can get better understanding about the laggings of their force and can take necessary steps according to that. On the other hand, force also get known environment because of their own supervisor as their trainer. ROBI also bring outside

specialists from abroad like Malaysia. In this way, they get the most advance and recent information from their competitors.

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9. Training Operation Evaluation:

In ROBI, The effectiveness of a training program is measured by evaluation of the trainees. This evaluation is necessary in terms of assessing the value of the training and in terms of improving the design of future programs. There are mainly four outcomes based on which the organization evaluates the success or failure of each training program. The four outcomes are- reaction, learning, behavior and results.

After each training session, each must have to submit an annual assessment. In the annual assessment, each trainee is asked to do report regarding the training program and is asked to do presentations on the items they have learnt. During the training, quizzes and assignments are also given among the trainees. The effects of training on their performance are evaluated through the performance they have done after taking part in the training compared to the performance they used to do before the training and by this the organization measure the effectiveness of that training program. The trainees who have gone abroad for attending the training program are required to submit a report regarding on the materials taught in the whole training program. This type of evaluation helps both the trainers as well as the trainees. The trainees can compare their own performance and try to improve according to that. The trainers can judge the effectiveness of training and can develop better strategy for the upcoming training program.

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10. Bibliography

Mr. Azizur Rahman Course Instructer Faculty of Business

Websites www.robi.com.bd www.en.wikipedia.org www.gsmworld.com www.btrc.gov.bd www.robi-users-group.blogspot.com

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