INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Human Resource
Management
Effect of Training & Development on the
Efficiency of UBL
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Acknowledgement

The compilation of this report could not have been realized without the blessings of Almighty Allah. We
are highly indebted to quite a few people who have been there from the beginning till the completion of
our final project. Their undue support has been the source of inspiration for us to complete it efficiently
within time.

We would deeply like to thank our teacher and Head of Human Resource Department for his guidance
during the project. His excessive support has been the source of motivation to perform our best, regarding
the report.

We would also like to thank Syeda Nida Bukhari, Training Manager-south, Training and Organization
Development-HR (UBL) and Miss. Sana Fatima Kizilbash, Assistant Manager-HR (UBL) who
provided us opportunity to visit the organization to understand its training and development process and
its effect on efficiency.
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Contents
Acknowledgement...................................................................................................... ii
Contents.................................................................................................................... iii
Introduction to Organization.......................................................................................4
Training Facilities at UBL............................................................................................5
Trainers......................................................................................................................5
Trainees...................................................................................................................... 6
Training & Development Organization........................................................................7
Keys issues in training:............................................................................................7
Kinds of Training.........................................................................................................8
Modes of training........................................................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 11
References................................................................................................................12
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Introduction to Organization

“To be a world class bank dedicated to excellence, and to surpass the highest expectations of our
customers and all other stakeholders”

UBL is a Banking Company, which is engaged in Commercial & Retail Banking and related services
domestically and overseas.UBL was established in 1959 and is one of the major commercial banks of
Pakistan. The Bank is making every effort to meet the up-coming challenges through strategic planning
and making the best use of the resources at its command. A professional team was appointed in mid 1997
to restructure the bank and to commence rationalizing. The management is also in the process of
rationalizing the branch network and identifying and recovering its doubtful and classified portfolio. It
has planned to institute major improvements in customer services and internal systems to improve
efficiency. It also intends to launch innovative products. The bank is increasing resource mobilization
through regular deposit campaigns and accelerating the process of recovery of outstanding advances and
non-performing assets.

UBL operates 1375 domestic and a subsidiary viz. United Executors and Trustees Company Ltd. as on
30.06.2000. It has 20 overseas branches situated in the UK, USA, UAE, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar. It
also operates one offshore branch in the Export Processing Zone, Karachi and it has representative offices
in Cairo-Egypt and Tehran-Iran. It also has a joint venture – Oman United Exchange Co., Oman Muscat
and a subsidiary – United Bank A.G. Zurich, Switzerland set up in 1968. It has 21 ATMs with 8 in the
UAE, 3 in Bahrain, 1 in Doha, 7 in Islamabad and 2 in Karachi.

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Training Facilities at UBL

UBL has three training centers across Pakistan located at Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. These training
centers are equipped with modern computer labs for computer labs, training hall with all the necessary
technological requirements, beautiful lawn along with a dining facility. Training for the new employees
and refresher courses for the existing employees who are currently working in branches and different
offices of UBL are conducted on periodic basis, whereas, for locations far away from the training centers,
trainers are trained in the same facility so that they can be sent to far away branches and offices of UBL to
further train the employees there. Audio visual aids and different sort of skill development games are also
used for the training and development of the workers or employees.

Trainers

A) In-house faculty

UBL has certain pools of trainers divided as corporate trainers, sales trainers, consumer banking
trainers etc. There are expertise trainer’s artilleries focusing different areas of the industry, the
organization aggressively depends on its in-house faculty not only to satisfy its functional needs
but also to train the managerial staff.

B) From market

UBL invites trainers to organization to train its employees to develop special managerial skills.
Professional trainers and motivational speakers in the market are invited as guest speakers to
address the officials of the organization to induce leadership skills.

C) Portfolio manager of UBL

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Successful professional of the bank itself also come and speak to the middle and lower level
employees and share their experience with their colleagues, in this way the lower level employees
see their bosses as a source of inspiration and feel privileged to work with them.

Trainees

UBL has been training the highest number of trainees in the industry, since the start of 2009 UBL has
trained above 10,000 trainees till now. They have different ranking criteria for the employees. These
ranking help them to promote the employees to different departments and it is their appraised ranking
over which their training needs, requirements and programs are decided. Ranking also gives the feedback
of the performances of the trainee. Training programs are also organized according to the training needs
of the work position they are promoted to.

Before the restructuring there existed lack of communication between senior and junior management like
juniors used to feel hesitation to mingle with their seniors and seniors also hesitate to communicate with
their upper heads. This problem was catered by conducting training sessions in which all the senior and
junior staff relating to any particular department/specialize task are gathered under one roof, they are
trained there under all the scenarios that can take place in the organization. All the contractual and
permanent members are treated equally in these training sessions without any discrimination. Also while
training the workers in a training program it is made sure that each worker knows the duties and
understands the responsibilities of his/her fellow worker, so that he/she can be the replacement in case of
need. It also builds awareness in the employees i.e. an employee in the sales department is aware about
the other department so that if any absenteeism takes place, he can be able to coup the situation.

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Training & Development Organization

Training need assessment (TNA) is done by the business support and communicated to the training
department so that training department can schedule the training calendar for the organization for the year
ahead. There are about 14 to 15 in-house programs and about 45 public programs in which employees
are trained and trainer are sent to other cities to train other employees every month.

Keys issues in training:

1) Why the training is required at this time? What is the objective of the training? What results are
required at the end of the training?

2) Timing: as the time period covers, it gives you an idea about the training sessions that when it has
to conduct.

3) How many people that are going to get training? So that necessary arrangement can be made
correspondingly.

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4) How much money will be required to train those people? Since in UBL the allocation of money
for training is being done by the head office rather than training department.

5) Evaluation of training:

• Feedback form trainers/trainees: Its is essentially important to know weather the

trainees are getting for what they are trained for or not, at the same time on the basis of
trainees’ feedback trainers are jugged and appraised accordingly.

• Training content: The trainees opinion about the understandability of the training
material, whether printed or audio/video reveals validity and consistence of the training
program. Trainer presentation and communication skills can also create difference.

• Training environment : Whenever we talk about the training environment it refers to the
atmosphere of the place where training is being conducted, seating arrangement, visibility
of the presenter and audibility of speaker, food and even temperature and lightening of
the room.

Kinds of Training

1) Functional development

It is directly related to job description (especially for bank employees) for the task the employee is hired
or promoted. Functional training is usually necessary for the branch level employees and for those
workers involved in daily routine operations of the banks. Those personnel (e.g. tellers) who run the
touch-points of the organization also receive the functional training. In which employees are taught how
to motivate subordinates, how to dress well, cash counting techniques, how to attend calls, how to greet
customers, etc.

2) Management development

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The training which relates to the behavior modification and personnel growth of the employees i.e. time
management, stress management, leadership skills etc. It includes activities so that managers may not
feel overburdened and at the same time the prestige and reputation of the bank can be upheld. The
activities include playing golf, skiing, rock climbing, tug of war etc.

Modes of training
1) Class room

Training organized in a school/college like class room with comfortable environment, equipped
with OHP (overhead projector) or multimedia system, with the help of which trainer presents the
training material to the audiences.

2) System based training

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The training organized in a computer lab with hands on practice on the bank’s software and
various procedures needed to perform different tasks quickly and efficiently. It can be further
classified in to two aspects:

• Virtual branch: virtual bank branch is created with in the computer lab; each trainee is
required to work with computer to learn to perform the routine tasks as mentioned in the
job description.

• Role playing: role playing is the most interesting mode of training, during this type of
training trainees are assigned various roles with whom they are expected to come across
frequently in their job performance in different situations.

3) On job

The training an employee receives while working, directly from his/her immediate supervisor or
line manager. In this type of training co-workers play a very important role and also the
interpersonal and communication skills of both the trainee and the trainer has to be extremely
good.

4) Workshop

Workshops are organized by the bank to increase the awareness about the amount of technicality
involved in the work. Also it provides the opportunity to the participants to share their views and
to increase their inter-personal and reasoning skills.

5) Seminars

Seminars and symposiums are the key activities to keep the managers and decision makers of the
organization motivated, and also updated to the constantly changing business environment of the
globe. Individuals from other institutions (some times from abroad) and even from different
departments and divisions of the same organizations are invited, they present their opinions and
share their expertise knowledge with the audience so that it can be effectively utilize to achieve
organizational goals.

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Conclusion

The purpose of the project was to skeptically analyze the training and development procedures of
UBL and find its effect on the efficiency. It is not possible to directly conclude about the nexus
of training and development procedures with efficiency, however the effect of good and
meaningful training can be obviously seen through the behavior of the employees with the
customers and the value delivered to the customers at the touch-points (branches) of the
organization.

The restructured training program of the bank also focuses on the personnel development of the
workers other than fulfilling the functional needs. Its impact can be noticed by the fact that today
hardly any worker of the bank in any branch can be seen in non professional dress during the
working hours, today each phone call received at the bank is treated as a professional call and it is
attended by a pleasant opening greeting unlike four to five years back when nobody in the bank
cares to attend the phone calls. Similarly, previously some of the workers of the bank were in a
habit of chewing ‘pan’ at the workplace but now it has become difficult to find such pathetic
environment at the workplace. To this day most of the branches of UBL have been completely
renovated and those left are in the process, giving an entirely new, dynamic, professional and
above all customer service oriented look to the organization.

Also the turn over of the newly hired employees at UBL shows a declining trend since last six
years, turnover in the year 2004 was 61%, 2005 was 50%, 2006 was 43%, 2007 was 40 %, 2008
was 49% and in 2009 was 26%, this shows the employees willingness to stay with and work for
the organization has increased with time. All these significant changes are induced by the
intentionally designed training and development programs keeping in view the specific training
needs of the industry, complying towards its mission and vision.

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References

1. Syeda Nida Bukhari

Training Manager-South

Training & Organization Development-HR

UBL Training Center-South

Phone: 021-4380624, 4381973 Ext-212

2. Sana Fatima Kizilbash

Assistant Manager

HR Management

Head office, UBL

UAN: 111-825-111 Ext-2849

College of Business Management, I.oB.M, Karachi