Page 137 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

Managing attitudinal changes of employees
It was observed that starting from the introductory session of the training
programme, the participants in the employee cadre would start criticising
and complaining against the decisions taken by the management cadres.
Similarly, the Officers and Managers would complain about staff
indiscipline and low productivity at the branches and getting no support
from Higher Office for mangers who attempted to enforce discipline.
They used to complain that managers were sandwiched between the ever
demanding staff and over-ambitious Higher Management pressing them
to improve productivity as well as achieve target based growth. They
would complain against each other bitterly not only during the first
session but whenever any opportunity they got in some context during
the rest of the sessions also. So, a lot of time was wasted in pacifying
them taking a balanced view throughout the training period. There was
a lot of mistrust among the employees and the managers.

I developed one session on "Sense of Belonging and Pride in the
Organization" so that they understand their own role and rewards in the
bank's growth and understand that the reputation of the bank is built by
its people, their quality, their capability and service quality and not by
the magnificient brick and mortar Head office building or Branch Building
and other impressive physical infrastructure.

One of my colleagues also decided to take one session to make all the
participants aware about the past glory of the bank and how to regain it
so that they start thinking positive and contribute more in growth of
the bank.

These two sessions brought some change in the attitudes of the
participants at least while they were at the Staff College and whatever
they had to say about other cadres, they used to say only in the first two
sessions kept in the beginning of the programme. This helped in
improving content delivery in the rest of the sessions.

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