Measuring effectiveness of foundation training program provided by Bangladesh Bank training academy

Abstract

Bangladesh Bank as the central bank of Bangladesh is playing an essential role in advancing the economy’s smooth functioning, creating business friendly policies and protecting the economy in times of crisis. For the best performance in today’s ever changing world, Bangladesh Bank’s employees are required to be given adequate training so that they can adapt with changes and keep themselves updated with latest knowledge about the banking sector and the economy. As training incurs a lot of cost and in today’s world cost must be justified so training must be evaluated to check whether its benefits overshadow the cost or not. Bangladesh Bank Training Academy (BBTA) provides around 80 training programs among which the most prominent one is “Foundation Training”. Training is an attempt to improve current and future performance of employees. Development refers to those learning opportunities designed to help employee’s growth. Here in central bank, Assistant Directors are recruited in an entry level position where they come from different educational background. Most of them do not even have any business background to understand the banking industry. Some of them are fresh graduate who have no experience. Through foundation training program, they are expected to come at a same knowledge level and skill. The main objective of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of foundation training program that is provided to Assistant Directors by BBTA. Sometimes it is very much difficult to measure the outcome by rating or scoring and expressing the result numerically where issues are subjective like knowledge, skill or even behavior. So here, I choose Kirkpatrick’s four level evaluation model which is considered to measure the effectiveness and performance improvement of an employee and it is judged subjectively. For getting this evaluation done, a qualitative study has been done though interview with 10 employees of Bangladesh Bank. Two of them already became supervisor of other Assistant Directors which make this study more reliable and resourceful. Here, post-test questionnaire has been used and participants were asked 7 questions which falls under different levels of Kirkpatrick’s model. Questions were designed from the perspective of both the supervisors and trainees. Level 1 Evaluation found that Participants’ reaction is totally positive towards the foundation training program. Level 2 evaluation says participant get to know about the style and unique functioning of Bangladesh Bank from the perspective of central bank’s overview and country’s economy. Level 3 Evaluation proved the trainees becomes more matured as a central banker and they get professionalism in their daily activity and finally Level 4 Evaluation accomplished that foundation training programs’ objective has been served through communicating its core values with employees. In few instances, limitations are faced due to the characteristics of the training courses. For such a case, a rational solution has been developed as practicable. I believe, current training function requires alteration and adjustments in coming days so this valuation report may help them for further advancement.