Co-ordination of Training Activities: Travails and Imperfections

The chairman and managing director (CMD) of Coastal Bank Ltd, Mangalore, had received a lot of complaints regarding the process of training needs identification, training evaluation as well as overall coordination of training programmes indirectly through the office of personnel administration division (PAD) headed by general manager (GM) of his bank. The CMD’s office had also received a bunch of complaints regarding interpersonal conflicts arising out of attitudinal disorientation and also due to employees’ inadaptability to upgrade the knowledge to the requirements of the day. Since the bank had invested thousands of dollars on training and development, expecting it to be the key instrument in transforming the skills of the employees for better work culture, the problem had to be analysed from the angle of the ineffectiveness of the training process in establishing the supportive work culture in different departments. Mr Sham Rao, CMD, called a governing council meeting where training review committee was a part, which was headed by the GM of PAD. The governing council meeting was also attended by executive director (ED) as well as GMs heading various divisions of the bank. In the meeting, they decided to consult Colaco & Co., leading consultants in India to analyse the existing training practice from the angle of training needs identification, evaluation as well as the coordination process in training and development to diagnose the problem. Colaco & Co. conducted the process of consultation and survey to detect the problems in the area of training. Consultants detected the problem areas by proposing the plumages of ideal training system as well as the training model that could be used by Coastal Bank Ltd, in particular, and any commercial bank, in general. The real problem was the total lack of coordination of the training activities which made the training a real liability. At the governing council meeting, the CMD along with the ED of the bank requested the GM of PAD to solve this problem by following the recommendations presented by Colaco & Co.