CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY        

Training of employee has become a major pre-occupation in modern organizational objective of growth. To achieve this basic objective of growth and profitability, it means that management as well as employees must improve their input into the organization. This is because the performance of an organization is a function of the collective performance of employees. Garavan, Costine and Herathy (1995:47) opine that there are many critical factors which organizations must consider as they face the future. This alone implies that the success of an organization depends on who works to achieve the organization’s objective, that is, the presence of qualified manpower.

Training is effort initiated by an organization to foster learning among its workers, and development is effort that is oriented more towards broadening an individual’s skills for the future responsibility. (George & Scott, 2012). Training and development are a continuous effort designed to improve employees’ competence and organize performance as a goal to improve on the employees’ capacity and performance. Human Resource Management has played a significant role in the economic development of most developed countries like Britain America and Japan. In a developing country like Cameroon, with its rich natural resources and financial support, one can also experience such economic success if the appropriate attention is given to the development and training of her human resources. Every aspects and activities in an organization involves people. For instance, a manager will not be successful if he has subordinates who are not well equipped with skills, knowledge, ability, and competence (SKAC).

To run an organization, be it big or small, requires staffing the organization with efficient personnel. Specific job skills, ability, knowledge and competence needed in the workplace are not efficiently taught `in the formal education. As such, most employees need extensive training to ensure the necessary SKAC to bring out substantive contribution towards the company’s growth. For employees to be flexible and effective in their job, they need to acquire and develop knowledge and skill, and for them to believe that they are valued by the organization they work for, then they need to see valuable signs of management commitments to their training needs. Each new employee must be properly trained not only to develop technical skills, but to make them an integral part of the organization. Training and development is an aspect that must be faced by every organization, and its major aim is to improve the employees’ competencies such that the organization can maximize effectiveness and efficiency of their human resources. It can be an advantage for an organization if they win the “hearts and minds” of their workers, getting them to identify with the organization (Armstrong, 2009). For workers to be equipped to perform well, there must be an investment in the training processes. These processes are part of the entire human resource management approach which results in employees being motivated to perform. However, training vary from organization to organization in relation to the quality and quantity of training factors, which may include: the degree of external environment change, the degree of change in the internal environment, current suitable skills in the existing work force and the level to which the management see training as a motivating factor in the workplace, (Cole, 2002).

One would add that training is a set of activities, whereby, practitioners, managers or would be managers are assisted in improving their individual competence and performance as well as the organization’s environment with the ultimate goal of raising the standard of organizational performance. It therefore follows, that employee training and development are at the heart of employee utilization, productivity, commitment, motivation and growth. An organization may have employees that are determined with appropriate equipment a managerial support, yet employee performance falls below expected standards. The missing factor in many cases is lack of adequate skills and knowledge, which are acquired through training, Ubeku (1995:10) sees human resource management as a control function exercised by all managers in an organization and/or by a particular department often designated as personnel or human resources. It is therefore, important that the need for training be identified and provided for. It is an indispensable part of management function in terms of operational efficiency and effectiveness. This is because an organization which puts great emphasis on employee training is directly planning for its survival and steady growth.

Employees’ performance depends on many factors like job satisfaction, knowledge and management but there is relationship between training and performance (Khan, Khan, & Khan, (2011). This shows that employees’ performance is important for the performance of the organization and that training and development is beneficial for the employees to improve their performances. This can only be possible if the employees are effective on their job therefore, training and development of employees is inevitable.

    Training is important for the employees’ development and the employees’ development encourage self-fulfilling skills and abilities of the employees, decreased operational costs, limits organizational liabilities and changing goals and objectives (Donald, 2009). It is very difficult for an employee to perform well at the workplace without any pre-training (Garavan, 1997). Trained employees perform better than the untrained ones (Adenuga, 2011). As a result, it is very necessary for every organization to train its employees in order to meet overall goals of the organization. Training and development, and on the job training have significant effect on organizational performance (Khan, Khan, & Khan, 2011). However to improve employees’ knowledge and skills, employees must also develop a greater self-efficacy and confidence in performing their job.

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The issues of employee training were not taken seriously by many organizations this is because of the failure to acknowledge the fact that the business environment has become very dynamic and only those organizations with the right manpower to meet the modern technological and informational need in the business times can succeed in the globalized business world.

Training is paramount to the success of any modern organization, for organization to compete effectively it must train its manpower to meet with the requirements for sustainability. However, organization that do not train or embark on inadequate training encounter certain problems, these include low performance, poor coordination, increase labor turnover, inadequate manpower low capital base, loss of market share, and the inability to cope favorably with the technological and informational demands of the business environment.

To sustain capable, experienced and qualified employees in an organization, provision of adequate training and development cannot be compromised. The prevailing dynamic nature of banking sector demands adequate strategy in improving quality, customer services, productivity and innovations through skills acquisition techniques. Of recent, banking sector faces barrages of problems ranging from electronic fraud, ineffective performance leading to their merger and acquisition, which in-turn led to some employees’ retrenchment. These challenges portray the sector’s dire need of highly skilled bank employees that are up to the present challenges, hence, the employees need training and re-training for effective functioning.

The major problem of the bank is how to retain and remain in the leadership position in the years of its existence, hence the need for training policy that will bring improve quality services. The problem also stems from the fact that the bank is yet to evolve the philosophy of training and development which implies that there must be management, employee commitment and team work for quality training, also Inadequate funding of training, failure to engage credible professional trainers and adequately brief trainers on the specific trends in the bank. The management of the bank should be able to spend huge amount of money on training and development of staff as well as acquiring seasoned personnel with a view to realizing the set objectives of the bank.

1.3     OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY  

The general objective of this study is to examine the role of training on organization performance in First Bank PLC, a case study of Ifo LGA of Ogun state. The specific objectives include the following:

1.     To determine the practice of employee training in First Bank PLC.

2.     To find out the implication of employee training on the productivity of First Bank PLC.

3.     To determine the nature of relationship between training and organizational growth.

4.     To evaluate the extent to which training results to employee job satisfaction.

5.     To examine the effect of training on employee capacity and self-confidence in First Bank PLC.