How Organizational Training Affects Employee Performance: A Case on Bangladesh Private Banking Sector

Employees are one of the leading assets of any organization and the vigorous role they play towards an organisation’s success cannot be undervalued. Accordingly, equipping these unique assets through effective training becomes imperative in order to maximize the job performance. Also position them to take on the challenges of the today’s competitive business climate. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to determine the effect of organization’s training on employee performance. The nature of this study was quantitative and data for this study had been collected through structured questionnaire by conducting survey. A total 200 respondents were selected through convenience sampling technique from the different private banks, mainly from Chattogram. All the data of this study were processed and analyzed through SPSS software (version 24). The value of Cronbach Alpha was 0.796 which means that the data of this study is reliable according to Nunnaly, (1978). Hypotheses were tested by employing the multiple regression analysis. From the findings, it was found that organization’s training has significant effect on the performance of their employees. More precisely, out of four hypotheses, three hypotheses such as Foundation Training, On the Job Training, Career Development Training, have significant effect on Employee Performance, on the other hand, Orientation Training has no significant effect on Employee Performance. Eventually, this study was concluded by providing few recommendations for managerial implication. ARTICLE INFORMATION Received: 26 August 2019 Revised: 23 September 2019 Accepted: 03 October 2019 DOI: 10.31580/ijer.v2i4.959


INTRODUCTION
Organizations are facing increased competition due to globalization, changes in technology, political and economic environments (Evans, Pucik & Barsoux, 2002) and therefore prompting these organizations to train their employees as one of the ways to prepare them to adjust to the increases above and thus enhance their performance. It is, therefore, in every organizations responsibility to enhance the job performance of the employees and certainly implementation of different training programs is one of the major steps that most companies need to attain. As is evident that employees are a crucial resource, it is important to optimize the contribution of employees to the company aims and goals as a means of sustaining effective performance (Afshan, Sobia, Kamran & Nasir, 2012). Additionally, bearing in mind that human resources are the intellectual property of the organisation, employees prove to be a good source of gaining competitive advantage and training is the only way of developing organizational intellectual property through building employees' competencies (Houger, 2006). Into the bargain, consistent with Sari (2009), training is seen as one of the key practices of HRM and it refers to the programs designed to teach the employees about the company specifics, educate them on the general rules of an organization, to provide them technical knowledge which is considered important to complete the job tasks effectually and to eliminate the probable limitations at work.
On the word of Cole (2002), training enhances skills, knowledge, attributes and competencies and ultimately worker performance and productivity in organizations. Several prior studies provided a positive connection between training and employee performance, as training brings benefits for the employee along with for the firm by positively impacting employee performance through the enhancement of employee's competencies and behaviour (Mira & Odeh, 2019;Karim, 2019;Jain & Sharma, 2019;Hidayat & Budiatma, 2018, Kiruja & Mukuru, 2018. Hogarh (2012) stated that the importance of training can only be estimated with a clear understanding of its direct effect on employee's performance. An improvement in employee's performance also leads to an improvement in the organization's performance, simultaneously, the failure of organizations in their training programs can lead to many problems due to their inability to cope with the challenges of the competitive environment (Jagero et al., 2012). In the same way, Otuko, et al. (2013) well-thought-out that many organizations are unsuccessful because their employees not trained well enough in skills that actually matter in the age of information. In these regard, the training programs assists in making knowledge of employees with more advance technology and obtaining powerful competencies and skills in order to handle the functions and basics of recently introduced technical equipment's (Farooq & Khan, 2011). Thus, for any organization, training is needed to raise their employee's performance and if employees are trained well, they will be aware of their job specifications, skills necessary to do job and be capable to use new technology (Khan, 2012).
In Bangladesh, there are many organizations from different sectors including banking sector who are providing several training programs to its employees to enhance their managerial and 2 operational skills. Harmoniously, the private banking sector is one of such sectors that practices different training and development for their employees to boost up not only inter-personal skills but also their overall performances. Into this bargain, there are also few organisations in this sector who are not successful yet because their employees are not trained well enough in skills that actually matter in the age of information. Besides, to arrange various training programs for the employees' soft skill development also involves additional costs which is also considered as one of the reasons for not arranging different training programs for the purpose of the enhancement of the employee performance in Bangladesh. Thus, in light of the above background, the objective of the study is to examine the effects of training on employee performance in the context of private banking sector, Bangladesh. Consequently, the present study is proposing the following research question to achieve the study objectives: How does training affect employee performance?

Defining Training
Training plays an important role in the effectiveness of organizations and to the experiences of people at work. Training has implications for productivity, health and safety at work and personal development, therefore all organizations employing people need to train and develop their staff. Most organizations are conscious of this requirement and invest effort and other resources in training and development. As one of the major functions of HRM, training has for long been recognized and thus attracted great research attention by academic writers (Gordon 1992;Beardwell, Holden & Claydon, 2004). This has yielded into a variety of definitions of training. For example, Gordon (1992) defines training as the planned and systematic modification of behaviour through learning events, activities and programs which result in the participants achieving the levels of knowledge, skills, competencies and abilities to carry out their work effectively. According to Cole (2002), training is a learning activity which is directed towards the acquisition of specific knowledge and skills for the purpose of an occupation or task. Therefore, investment in training and development is regarded as good management practice to maintain appropriate expertise on the job now and in the future. Training is therefore necessary to enhance the knowledge, skills and attitude of employees and this make it easier for employees to acquire further knowledge based on the foundation gained from the training and further effect changes in other co-workers.
Again, according to Dessler (2008), training is the process of teaching or giving new employees the basic skills, they need to perform their jobs. Training is an educational process through which people can learn new information, re-learn and reinforce existing knowledge and skills and more importantly have time to think and consider what new options can help them improve their effectiveness at work. Effective trainings convey relevant and useful information that inform participants and develop skills and behaviour that can be transferred back to the workplace (Dessler, 2008). According to McGhee et al. (1996), learning takes place when the behaviour of people change based on the results from experiences. Therefore, one evaluates if learning has effectively taken place by comparing and contrasting a person's behaviour before on a schedule and after, therefore there should be a behavioural change when training takes place effectively. The definition also presupposes that training can be offered as skill development for individuals and groups and this involves learning of content as a means for enhancing skill development and improving workplace behaviour.

Benefits of Training
To acquire and improve knowledge, skills and attitudes towards work related tasks are some of the foremost purposes of organisational training. It is one of the most significant and prospective motivators which can lead to both the short-term and long-term benefits for individuals and organizations (Nassazi, 2013). As long as an organization exists, training forms an integral part of the day to day running of that organization and both new and existing employees need training in order to function well. Many new employees can be equipped with most of the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to start work, but others may require extensive training to ensure their effective contribution to the organization. Training does not only benefit the employee but the employer and the organization as a whole (Karim, 2019). Some of the benefits of training to the individual, employee and organization as a whole according to (Cole, 2002), are indicated below: increases employees' self-esteem, lower the production cost; helps to adopt changes; provide recognition, enhanced responsibility and the possibility of increased pay and promotion; and helps to improve the availability and quality of staff.
According to Sari (2009), training programs teach the employees about the company essentials, educate them on the general rules of an organization, to provide them technical knowledge which is considered important to complete the job tasks effectively and to eradicate the probable imperfections at work. Also, by focusing on specific skills required for the current need, training has been reckoned to help employees do their current jobs or help meet current performance requirement (Kleiman, 2000). In keeping with Abbas (2014), each new employee must be properly trained not only to develop technical skills, but to make them an integral part of the organization, hence, training not only develops the employees capabilities but also sharpen their thinking ability and creativity to take better decision in time and in more productive manner.
In addition, training leads to enriched profitability and more positive attitudes toward profit orientation, improves the job knowledge and skills at all levels of the organization, improves the morale of the workforce and helps the employees identify with organizational goals (Karim, 2019;Sims, 1990). At the same time, training benefits individual employees through helping them make better decisions and effective problem solving, assisting in encouraging and achieving self-development and self-confidence, helping an employee a person handles stress, tension, frustration, and conflict, increasing job satisfaction and recognition and moving the person toward personal goals while improving interaction skills (Karim, 2019;Sims, 1990). Among the many benefits of training programs, it can eliminate risks of an organizations because the trained personnel will be efficient, thus will be able to make better use of the organizations property thereby reducing and avoiding waste. Training will also make the employees feel a sense of security thus labour turnover can be avoided (Cole, 2002). Therefore, companies which are providing effective training programs to their employees are getting success in retaining them. Hence employee retention is a volunteer move by organizations to create an environment which involves employees for long term. To retain employees, organizations need to think seriously about their investment in training and development (Karim, 2019;Chaminade, 2007).

Employee Performance
In the organizational context, performance is usually defined as the extent to which an organizational member contributes to achieving the goals of the organization. Employees are a primary source of competitive advantage in service-oriented organizations (Luthans & Stajkovic, 1999;Pfeffer, 1994). Employee performance plays an important role for organizational performance. Employee performance is originally what an employee does or does not do. Performance of employees could include: quantity of output, quality of output, timeliness of output, presence at work, cooperativeness (Güngör, 2011). Macky and Johnson (1999) revealed that improved individual employee performance could improve organizational performance as well. From Deadrick and Gardner's (1997) points of view, employee performance could be defined as the record of outcomes achieved, for each job function, during a specified period of time. Likewise, Kenney et al. (1992) stated that employee's performance is measured against the performance standards set by the organization. On the word of Jangira and Ahuja, (1992), there are several measures that can be taken into consideration when measuring performance e.g. using of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, quality and profitability measures.
On the other hand, Darden and Babin (1994) stated that employee's performance is a rating system used in many corporations to decide the abilities and output of an employee. Good employee performance has been linked with increased consumer perception of service quality, while poor employee performance has been linked with increased customer complaints and brand switching. It is important to note that performance management includes activities that ensure that organizational goals are being consistently met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on performance of the employees, a department, processes to build a product or service (Darden & Babin, 1994). Earlier research on productivity of workers has showed that employees who are satisfied with their job will have higher job performance, and thus supreme job retention, than those who are not happy with their jobs (Landy 1985). Further, Kinicki and Kreitner (2007) document that employee performance is higher in happy and satisfied workers and the management find it easy to motivate high performers to attain firm targets.

Effect of Training on Employee Performance
Training program is one of the vital human resource management practices that affect the value of the workforce's knowledge, capability and skill positively as stated by Guest (1997). In the long run, the effects are higher on employees' job performance and creating super companies (Guest, 1997). Tzafrir (2005) emphasised strongly that, training is an important element in producing the human capital while Qureshi (2007) established that training as an HRM practice has a very positive impact on the performance of the employees since a highly positive correlation was found in that study. In the same vein, Valle et al. (2009) intimated without mincing words the provisions training equips employees with in terms of skills, abilities and knowledge required by their various positions. These studies have encouraged organisations in their commitment to employees' training & development.
Besides, numerous existing literature present evidence of an existence of obvious effects of training on employee performance. Some studies have proceeded by looking at performance in terms of employee performance in particular (Karim, 2019;Purcell, Kinnie, Hutchinson, Rayton, & Swart, 2003;Harrison 2000) while others have extended to a general outlook of organizational performance (Guest 1997;Swart et al. 2005). In one way or another, the two are related in the sense that employee performance is a function of organizational performance since employee performance influences general organizational performance. Moreover, Cheng and Ho (2001) discussed the relevance of training and its considerable effect on job performance. On the word of authors, while employee performance is one of the crucial measures emphasized by the top management, employees are more concerned about issues on their own productivity and are increasingly aware of the accelerated obsolescence of knowledge and skills in their turbulent organisational environment.
Furthermore, Ahmad and Bakar (2003) settled that high level of employee commitment is achieved if training achieves learning outcomes and improves the performance, both on individual and organizational level which are like the results of Kim (2006), Swart et al. (2005) and Bartel's (2000) study. In relation to the above, Wright & Geroy (2001) mentioned that employee competencies change through effective training programs and therefore not only improves the overall performance of the employees to effectively perform their current jobs but also enhances the knowledge, skills an attitude of the workers necessary for the future job, thus contributing to superior organizational performance. Training has been validated to generate performance improvement related benefits for the employee as well as for the organization by positively influencing employee performance through the development of employee knowledge, skills, ability, competencies and behaviours (Appiah 2010;Harrison 2000;Guest 1997).

Conceptual Framework and Study Hypotheses
In banking sector of Bangladesh, there are different types training programs such as orientation training, foundation training, carrier development training, soft-skills development training, on the job training, of the job training, health and safety training etc. Most of the banks are normally arranged all these training and development programs for their employees to enhance their various skills. Among several training programs offered by the banking sector under the Bangladesh bank, the central bank of Bangladesh, the present study is only confined on the four training programs such as orientation training, foundation training, carrier development training and on the job training. Since the main objective of the study is to explore the effects of training on employee performance, thus the conceptual framework of this study is given in Figure 1,

Data Collection, Sampling Technique and Sample size
Data for the present study were collected through a structured questionnaire by conducting face to face survey in the different private banks of Bangladesh. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed among the selected private banks. All the respondents were selected using convenience sampling technique. Out of 200 questionnaires, 180 were returned from the respondents. From these 170 questionnaires, only 124 were returned in usable condition while 46 questionnaires were returned as the unusable condition. These 46 questionnaires were unusable because some of the respondents did not fill questionnaires appropriately with missing value while some other respondents had given multiple answers. The details of the data collection procedures are provided in the following Table 1.

Questionnaire Design, Measurement and Scaling
For an easy understanding and reading, the questionnaire is designed into two parts. The first part of the questionnaire is taking consideration in the demographic factor of the respondents (Q1 to Q5) (see appendix). The questions are designed with multiple choice selections for convenience. The second part of the questionnaire contains the main research questions (Q6 to Q32) where the respondents will provide their opinions regarding the statements of the questions. The aim is to collect the opinions regarding the effects of training on the employee performance in the banking sector. The answer of the questionnaire is solely based on the respondent's experience, perception (attitudes) of consumers about the delivered service and personal opinion.
Moreover, in the present study, there are four independent variables (such as orientation training, foundation training, on the job training & carrier development training) and one dependent variable which is employee performance. In the study instrument, the orientation training includes 6 items, foundation training has 6 items, on the job training holds 5 items and carrier development training has 5 items. All these items were scaled in a five-point Likert scale format starting from strongly disagree-1 to strongly agree-5. The dependent variable employee performance is consisting of 8 items and scaled in a five-point Likert scale format (from strongly disagree-1 to strongly agree-5).

Reliability Assessment
In order to prove the internal reliability, this study has performed Cronbach's Alpha Test of Reliability. Applying this test specifies whether the items pertaining to each dimension are internally consistent and whether they can be used to measure the same construct or dimension of service quality. Cronbach's alpha should be 0.700 or above (Nunnally, 1978). But, some of studies 0.600 also considered acceptable (Gerrard, Cunningham, & Devlin 2006). In Table 2, it is seen that the value of Cronbach's alpha (α) is 0.796 which is greater than the standard value, 0.7 and close to 0.8 Thus, it can be concluded that the data used in this study are valid and highly reliable.

Hypotheses Testing
Usually, in quantitative study tests of significance are used to decide whether certain inferences can be concluded regarding any differences or connections between variables. In this study, based on the study of literature review four hypotheses were proposed after literature review which were tested by using multiple regression analysis. To perform the multiple regression analysis, the SPSS software (version 24) has been used. SPSS automatically calculates the significance (or p-value), which is the probability of the null hypothesis (H0), being accepted. Hence the level of probability of 5% or less is commonly taken as an appropriate level for most general research including this study. As a result, H0 accepted if the significance is greater than 0.05 (H0 > 0.05) and covertly, H0 rejected if the significance is less than 0.05 (H0 < 0.05). The following tables are presenting the SPSS output revealed from the multiple regression analysis.
From Table 3, it has been seen that R value is 0.554. Therefore, R value (.554) for the overall Training programs, namely, orientation training (OR), foundation training (FT), on the job training (OJT), and carrier development training (CDT), suggested that there is a strong effect of these four independent variables on the Employee performance (EP). From the Table 3, it can also have observed that the coefficient of determination i.e. the R-square (R2) value is 0.307, which representing that 30.7% variation of the dependent variable, employee performance (EP), is due to the independent variables, that is, orientation training (OR), foundation training (FT), on the job training (OJT), and carrier development training (CDT), which in fact, is a strong explanatory power of regression.
From the Table 4, it is identified that the value of F-stat is 13.169 and is significant as the level of significance is less than 5% (p< 0.05). This indicates that the overall model was reasonable fit and there was a statistically significant association between Organization's Training and Employee Performance. Additionally, this also indicated that the null hypothesis is rejected and hence it can be concluded that Training have significant effect on Employee performance in the private banking sector of Bangladesh. In the Table 5, unstandardized coefficients indicated how much the dependent variable varies with an independent variable, when all other independent variables are held constant. The beta coefficients indicated that how and to what extent training, such as, orientation training (OR), foundation training (FT), on the job training (OJT), and carrier development training (CDT) effects the performance of the employees. It has also been found from the table 5.5 that, career development training (CDT) (beta = 0.399, t = 4.856, p = .000 <0.05), on the job training (OJT) (beta = 0.203, t = 2.432, p = .017 <0.05), and foundation training (FT) (beta = 0.166, t = 1.993, p = .048 <0.001) have the significant effect on employee performance, whereas, orientation training (OR) (beta = -0.101, t = -1.240, p = .217 ˃ 0.05), have no significant effect on the employee performance. On the other hand, multi-collinearity is the inter-correlation of the independent variables. Thus, multi-collinearity has been checked to verify whether the degrees of multi-collinearity among independent variables are high. If the correlation coefficient is at 0.90 and above, multi-collinearity problem exists (Hair et al. 2010). Besides, Hair et al. (2010) suggested that the tolerance value of 0.10 or below and variance inflation factor (VIF) value of 10 or above show a high multi-collinearity. In the table 5.5, it has shown that the tolerance value of all independent variables, such as, orientation training (OR), foundation training (FT), on the job training (OJT), and carrier development training (CDT) is greater than 0.10 (˃0.01) and the variance inflation factors (VIF) value is less than 10 (˂10), which indicates that the degree of multi-collinearity among four independent variables is not high.

Discussion and Recommendations for the Organization
From the analysis of this study, it was found that the organizational training has significant effect on the employee performance. More precisely, out of four different types of training, the foundation training (FT), on the job training (OJT) and carrier development training (CDT) have strongly positive and significant effect on the employee performance (EP) and conversely, the orientation training (OT) has non-significant effect on the employee performance (EP). Therefore, based on the study findings, the following recommendations are proposed for the private banking sector to enhance their employees' performance more than the previous.  Organization should continue to provide the training programs to its employees require to improve their skills as well as their capabilities and the employees should also be more committed to the training and give off their best after the training.  Organization should identify the training needs more professionally and the modalities for selection made known to employees as most of the employees were not aware of how selection for training is done.


Organization should clear about the training process and objectives to their employees so that most of the employees will be more aware about the training process and goals.  As the training process hovers around the three most important areas: determining training need, designing training programs and implementation, and evaluation of the training programs and this should be in conjunction with the branch managers, head of departments as well as the human resource manager. This will help to determine the skill gap that has to be filled and who really needs to be trained.  Organization should evaluate the training programs in order to assess its effectiveness in producing the learning outcomes specified when the training intervention is planned, and to indicate where improvements are required to make the training even more effective.  Organization must motivate its employees who upgrade themselves through their training programs. Hence motivation generally seeks to boost employees' morale to work hard and thus increase productivity. In this regard, motivation include both extrinsic and intrinsic such as recognition, appreciation, acceptance, opportunities for promotion and career development.  From the research findings, it was found that orientation training has no significant effect on employee performance, thus it is suggested for the top management of organization to take motivational initiatives for making orientation training more effective.  Also, training is on-going process and should not be ignored in the running of the organization. Thus, organization should ensure the participation of all their staff members in both on-thejob as well as off-the-job training including other training programs to enhance their knowledge.

CONCLUSION
The reason for exploring the effect of organizational training on employee performance was motivated by the observation that some organizations do not seem to care about improving the capacity of their workforces; they instead frown at and punish for any weaknesses of employees. Thus training is a vital driver of the many different organizational developments related to introducing new concepts, work methods, products and technologies. Training is one of the principal mechanisms to increase employee's efficiency, to improve the workplace relationships, and to develop employees' skills and abilities in their relationship with corporate stakeholders. The findings of this study indicate that there exists a strong association between organization's training programs and employee performance in the private banking sector. This infers that there exists a positive relationship in between organization's training programs and employee performance. Organizations which invest to develop their employee skills through various training activities, will certainly reap the profits through employee productivity. It is very essential on part of the organizations to continuously develop the employees' skills in order to maximize employee performance. Since training has a significant impact and influence on employee performance and productivity, it is essential for the organization to maintain the ambient environment which involves continuous training process. Organizations which promote training and development practices tend to possess a shining corporate image.

Limitations of The Study
Based on the study findings, the following limitations were presented by the present study:  This study has covered only 200 respondents from the selected private banks, Chattogram, which may not represent the whole population.  This study only covered few selected private banks, from Chattogram division only. Thus, the findings of this study may also not represent the opinion of the overall banking sector of the country.


This study only considered four types training programs such as orientation training (OT), foundation training (FT), on the job training (OJT), and carrier development training (CDT), even though, there are many other training programs in any organization like bank.  It was not possible to get all sorts of relevant information the bank due to official confidentiality.  This study is based solely on the data provided by the organizations. Therefore, there is a chance of inaccuracy as the company might not want to reveal its weakness.

Scope for the Future Study
 Future study can be done in increasing the sample size, therefore will generate more representative and accurate study findings.  There are many variables that measure the effect of training programs on employee performance. One can choose the variables that are not considered in the present study.  As the present study only covered few selected private banks from Chattogram, thus future study can be done by covering the whole banking sector of Bangladesh.