Page 133 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

40. Question mark on training

effectiveness

A s a faculty member of Regional Staff College of the bank, I

observed the phenomena of training effectiveness from very
close quarters through many instances during my tenure.

Once, three Senior Assistants and functionaries of Employees Unions
from the branches reported for a 3 day Functional Training Programme
in the morning. Immediately after introductory session, they asked for
permission to visit a place of pilgrimage about 100 kms from the location
of Staff College. It was a very tough call for the Principal as this was rarely
faced. He consulted faculty colleagues who were equally perplexed to
suggest a solution. If these persons were allowed to go without leave
that would spread to all the staff at all other branches with cascading
effect, making it difficult to enforce discipline even at the Staff Colleges.
A unanimous decision was taken to convince them to be on leave of
whatever kind and that the leave application will be forwarded to their
respective Branch Heads where they could manage the approval of leave.
They fumed a lot on this decision but complied.

We observed that in some training programmes, about 40% participants
were not taking any interest in training sessions. When we spoke to the
batch of participants about their current and likely future assignment,
we found that these 40% trainees were neither actually working in the
functional domain for which the training was being imparted nor they
expected any such assignment in near future in one to two years' time
frame. Hence they had no motivation to seriously engage in the training
process.

130 | A Banker down the Rabbit Hole