Free Custom «A Training & Mentoring Program» Essay Paper

Executive Summary

The Bank of America can achieve its current and future goals through hard work and commitment of its employees.  The senior management of the bank plays a crucial role toward the achievement of its objectives and future success.  However, more often than not the senior retiring managers are succeeded by some of the junior management staff.  Thus, it's very important to ensure that the junior staff members are equipped with the necessary management skills and acquainted with the bank's processes.  In order to be able to achieve this, eligible employees ought to be provided with the necessary training and mentorship by the bank.  Bank of America has to search for employees with high leadership potential to replace the outgoing managers.  The selected employees must have exceptional leadership skills, communication skills, management and strategic planning abilities.

This proposal is based on designing training and mentoring program for the Bank of America and its future success.  In this proposal the training and mentoring program is suggested and described.  These programs are essential for the professional development of employees.  The training or mentoring program may be implemented by the bank's senior management.  The mentoring program is basically carried out to enhance the capabilities and skills of employees with high potential so as to enable them to effectively and efficiently run the various bank branches.  It is the process of supporting the employee to achieve the desired goals.  The mentoring program suggested in this proposal is a five year plan in which the mentee has to work in different departments of the bank to become the future Branch Manager.  The idea behind this proposal is to develop the different skills in the employee.  The employee after working in different departments can perform his or her job better as a Branch Manager because; he or she will come to know what is done in different departments and it will help them when they become Branch Managers.  Secondly, it will improve their communication skills. 

 

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Following the increasing global competition in the banking sector, it is important to have qualified and highly skilled bank managers who can set and achieve essential goals.  The main objective of this training and mentoring program is to equip both acting and incoming Bank of America Managers with the necessary knowledge and leadership skills. Moreover, the program will help the bank mentees to understand their work better as well as its functionality.  Methods such as role playing, conferences, and simulations will be employed in this particular programs.  Others will include learning exercises, requirement specifications, business ethics, and building long term relationships with customers.  The program will have a management plan that lays out the order of proposed activities and describes the manner in which the program will be managed.  This will include Purpose Applicability & Updates and Distribution, Organizational Tasks, Contract Administration and Oversight, and Contract Performance Management.  In addition, the management plan will demonstrate the timeframes for each activity and the resources to be used.  However, the program proposal will contain an evaluation plan that outlets the degree to which the set goals and objectives will be attained.  Additionally, data collection and project evaluation methods are also covered in this section.  On the other hand, the financial plan section contains all of the proposed projects financial assumptions.  Basically, all the consulting, non-personnel, and indirect costs will be covered in the financial plan section.

This proposal is to provide the comprehensive training & mentoring program for future Bank of America Managers.  In this training program, emphasis will be given on policies, procedures and strategies that must be adopted to train the employees so that they can become the future bank managers.  The management organizing the training programs is responsible for the whole process which includes the identification of training needs, objectives of the training program and performance standards and the evaluation of the effectiveness of training programs.

The main focus of this proposal is to highlight the goals of the training and mentoring program as well as the objects to be set to achieve them. According to Abudi "mentoring programs organized by managers allow workers to benefit from their experience" (Abudi 2009).  The exchange of ideas and sharing of experiences is a healthy activity for the business to flourish.  Mentoring programs are extremely helpful for the professional development of employees so that they can contribute to the organizational growth.  The mentor is a guide that can help the mentee to achieve his or her goals by helping and supporting them.

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The training & mentoring program will take five years and in these five years, the employee will work in different departments in order to be well prepared for future managerial positions.  The idea behind this type of training program is to make the mentee experience the role of different positions within a branch. According to the Hayes Group "mentoring is a transfer of knowledge, technical, organizational and leadership from experienced employee to a less experience employee" (Hayes Group 2007).

As a result of this training process mentees can obtain several advantages such as professional development of employees, attainment of employees with outstanding leadership skills, and achievement of more confidence. Moreover, the mentee can become a future Bank Manager with better communication skills. The mentoring process involves three main stages:

1. Design phase

• Readiness of an organization
• Defining goals and objectives
• Defining roles and communication plan

2. Implementation phase

• Selection of mentor
• Train the mentor

3. Evaluation phase

• Assessment of effectiveness of a training program

A mentoring program is a necessary tool for the assessment of mentee, who wants to acquire a certain position in the organization where he wants to work.  Over the past years, Bank of America has experienced several difficulties while hiring highly qualified managers. This is because majority of the people qualified for this position do not understand and are not familiar with the bank operations.  The ability to properly manage employees can have an enormous impact on an organization.  The effectiveness of the management staff may be gauged by looking at employee turnover rates, litigation experience, employee tenure, and cost of talent retention.  However, designing and implementing training programs for bank managers would enable managers to be adequately prepared to undertake their daily responsibilities in a manner that minimizes risk to the organization while improving relationships in the working environment.

The key goals of the training and mentorship program are to enable that the mentees to gain a general understanding of the purpose and scope of the bank's managerial system.  Moreover, it intends to give its users an opportunity to gain hands-on experience regarding Senior Management positions as well as their current positions.  The expectations and role of the mentor must be understood thoroughly.  Basically mentoring provides substantial benefits to both the mentors and the mentee.  The mentees can improve their leadership, communication and management skills.  Also, the training program has given the opportunity for the manager to know how to think ahead and forecast the risks associated with the different task. The decision making power must be utilized in the right manner so as to have better bank managers in the future.  Thus, "the training & mentoring program is beneficial for the mentors as well as they realize that their work experience and abilities are valuable for others" (Offstein et al's, 2007).  In addition, the program will help in building healthy relationships between the parties involved hence creating a friendly working environment.  The sharing of ideas and experiences is appreciated in a healthy working environment.  The training programs promote team building within the organization.  Also team work enables better understanding and sharing of knowledge, thus plays a vital role in enhancing performance.

These following training methods will be used in the training & mentoring program for future Bank of America Managers.

Role playing will be a technique used for training of professionals, so that they can understand the concepts and needs more easily. Moreover, role playing is a tool used to simulate the learning process. Role playing can be an elaborate form of simulation which is like a rehearsal to learn the skill; for example, an army does exercises for the preparation of war. There are many fields in which practice is done to remove bugs and handle the unseen problems. By applying this technique a number of advantages may be achieved.

• Ability to identify problems
• Improved performance
• Confidence may be acquired
• Time approximation for various tasks
• Improved communication skills
• Ability to resolve conflicts
• Improved interaction
• Conferences

The training is done by organizing different conferences.  It is a problem solving technique which encourages participation of trainees.  Many organizations seek to have conferences at different points of time throughout their whole fiscal year.  This helps the management to learn more about the current operation as well as the future planning programs that will help them to keep updated of what's required of them in the near future.  Besides this, the conferences helps people to speak up regarding different ideas that need to be shared and potential ideas that lead to some helpful outcomes are appreciated.  The workshops and seminars that are included in the conference are delivered exclusively by the professionals and delegates from other organizations.  This open workshop format with delegates combines learning with the interest of exchanging ideas and experiences with the other delegates.  "However the exchange process is also being carried out with the conferencing and thus the managers feel proud and courage for the head to head meeting and sharing their ideas that help them to build their careers more professionally" (Gardiner & Glenn, 2009).

In simulations; the trainees participate in reality based activities where they perform the tasks required by the job. This activity requires time and effort. It has the following advantages:

Stimulates the learning process

As this activity is reality based, it will help the trainees or mentees to perform better in job performances

Improves communication skills

Simulation proved to be a very helpful tool while assessing the managers and helping them cope with the existing workplace problems. "The focus has largely been on the acquisition and assessment of individual technical skills, but now the role of simulations in training teams to work with a greater degree of coordination is being acknowledged" (Moorthy, 2005)...