ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS:

3.1. Human Resource practices in the Organization

The HR Department of Banglalink is divided into three teams. Each unit has specific HR
practices and objectives related to employees. The name of the units is given below:

 Talent Management team: This team handles the recruitment process and the overall
training and development programs of the company.
 HR service delivery team: This team looks into the onboarding process, compensation
management (payroll, budgeting etc) and HR auditing.
 HR transformation team: This team handles the events of the company

Now, each team contains specific HR practices. The HR practices of Banglalink is given below:
3.1.1 Recruitment process

Recruitment process is a very important process for every organization. It has several crucial steps
starting from finding right pool of candidates to selecting required candidates.

Banglalink aims to ensure the following components to complete recruitment process for meeting
its talent requirement.
 Fair
 Transparent
 Competitive
 Agile

1. Recruitment Planning:
Recruitment planning: Planning is required to identifying job vacancies, analyzing job
and evaluating the job as well. In Banglalink, planning is done through headcount. Any
vacancy or opening is reported by the respective department to the Talent management
team through a head counting request where the department having the vacancy will give
details about the position/s. The talent management team will review the request and
confirm with the budget planning whether the new opening is convenient or not.
 Job Analysis and Job Evaluation: After reviewing request and completing the planning
process, Talent Acquisition Team will create job analysis with the help of the
departments who needs required employee. Every single job in the company is backed by
a job description. Banglalink uses the Mercer methodology to evaluate jobs. Jobs are
ranked based on this method and job bands are assigned accordingly.

2. Recruitment Strategy:
Sources of Recruitment: Banglalink recruit employees both internally and externally.
o Internal Recruitment occurs by posting job vacancies directly to internal employee
portal. Sometimes existing employee refer another employee for the vacant job. Other
than that, previous applicants who once applied for a current job but did not get
through the process is selected from Banglalink’s own CV database.
o External Recruitment is done through by posting the job vacant in different sources
and portals. These sources are:

 CV database
 Referral
 Social Media (LinkedIn, Facebook)
 Newspaper
 University Career Placement Offices
 Career Fair
 HR Agencies

Recruitment Tools: Banglalink uses digital tools to complete the recruitment process.
They have their own recruitment software through which CVs are stored. HR employees
select candidates and directly sends mail to the selected employees. The software also
keeps the rejected applicant’s CVs for future need of applicants.
3.1.2 Selection Process:
Banglalink follows a fixed selection procedure for both permanent and contractual
candidates.

Headcount Background
planning and Interview Investigation and
budgetting Physical Test

Create Permanent Job

requisition and Writtent test
offer
Approval

Screening and
Advertisement Choose Joining
applicants

The procedure has been shown as follows.

Initial Screening: Candidates apply for the job through different sources and as per the
requirement an initial screening is done.
Choose application: After screening out the applicants it is time for interview round,
which is mostly done through Telephone. Those who pass the telephone interview round
then they are given a scheduled date for the written exam.
Written Tests: The test varies for applicants, those who applied for a position in IT
department might get technical questions more. The candidates need to gain at least 50%-
70% of the marks to attend the interview.
Interview: Those who passed the written test, they have to sit for a face to face interview
with the interview board consisting HR personnel and high officials of Banglalink.
Candidates who have a culmination of good marks from both written test and interview
will most likely get the job.
Background Investigation: A background check of the candidates are done to see if the
candidate’s background, family and academic activities are good.
 Medical and Physical examination: A medical checkup is done to those candidates who
passed the interview round. This step is to see how fit physically and mentally the
candidate is to perform organizational tasks and responsibilities.
Job offer: An appointment letter would be given to the new recruit to who has passed the
medical and physical test,
Joining: In this case, the new recruit is asked to bring educational certificates, national ID
card, etc. or their experience letter. The joining formalities are handled by HR Operation
Team.

3.1.3 Orientation Process:

After finishing all the recruitment process and formalities, orientation take place through two
different way in Banglalink. First one is informal mostly known as “Work Unit Orientation”
and another one is more formal, known as “Organization Orientation”
Work Unit Orientation: This informal orientation occurs by assigning Banglalink
employees who are named as “Buddy” to the newly joined employees for introducing and
familiarizing with their job-related tasks and responsibilities. Buddies also introduces
employees to whole organizational system and always help them to tackle any problem.
Organization Orientation: It is a formal orientation which occurs monthly for the new
employees with a goal to give a brief overview of the organization’s policies and procedures.
HR team organizes the whole orientation event. Employees from each department give a
detail presentation about their department rules and cultures. It ends with a Q&A session.
3.1.4 Training and Development:
Learning & Development is at the heart of Banglalink. Banglalink strives hard to disruptively
transform the space of talent management & learn to help build a high-performance team by
embedding continuous learning culture in order to become the digitally savvy organization of
tomorrow. With the strategic intent to create sustainable leadership, Banglalink partake
various initiatives so that the leaders are able to balance both the pressure of short-term goals
and priorities along with long-term goals. These initiatives equip our leaders to act in agile
and novel way and prepare them to be future ready.
Banglalink take training and development program for their employees very seriously. Thus,
they have a designated space known as a Classroom for their training and development
programs and events.
Identifying the Training Needs: The learning and development process begins with a
rigorous training need analysis (TNA) to identify functional and behavioral skills required by
the employees. TNA is done together by the employees and their respective line managers in
facilitation with HR to make the outcome more conducive, effective, and relevant. HR
arranges training session in 70:20:10 method based on the TNA outcomes.
 Training Method: Banglalink use both, On the job training and Off the job training method
for their employees.
1. On the Job Training Method: This is an internal method where employees learn a
job by doing it themselves.
 Mentoring is another way where certain employee with specific needs are
assigned to a supervisor or a buddy from whom they can get a thorough and
personal learning sessions.
 Job rotation is one of their common practices for training the employees.
Mostly those employees who join as Management trainees has to go through a
job rotation phase to learn more about the departments and overall
organization.
 E-learning Sessions are fairly new and booming way to train and develop
employees. Banglalink have their e-learning management platform name
Talmundo for their employees. The classroom and e-learning sessions are
designed and executed in a manner that helps mitigate functional and
behavioral skill gaps of the employees

2. Off the Job Training Method: This is an external method where people are taken
away to another place for training.
 Classroom sessions occurs in their classroom space where senior manager
provides different type lectures and session to their sub ordinates.
 Role playing is another fun way to help employees develop managerial and
leadership skills.
 Team Building Activities occurs where employees are taken to another place
for camping where they get trained through different activities.
Banglalink also put great emphasis on the leadership trainings to build a strong pipeline of
leaders and executes distinctive leadership trainings based on Banglalink competencies,
people leadership, and relevant business acumens.

3.1.5 Performance Management System:

The performance appraisal process at Banglalink aims to improve the effectiveness of the
organization by contributing to achieving a well-motivated and competent workforce.
Performance is assessed based on both WHAT an employee has achieved throughout the
year and HOW the employee has achieved it. These two aspects are equally important and
have the same weight in the final performance rating. The overall the performance appraisal
occurs annually and yearly as well.
Performance appraisal system includes_
 1. Management by Objective: This is a well know strategic planning management model
that aims to improve the performance of the employees by clearly identifying goals and
objective by discussion and collaboration with employee and their supervisor.
2. 360 Degree Appraisal: In this performance appraisal system, an employee is not just
evaluated by his supervisor but also rated by subordinates, co-workers and manager
anonymously which is later incorporated into that employee’s review sheet.
3. V-Plan: It is a software system which is used for employee’s evaluation given by anyone
from the company. Regardless of the department and rank.

3.1.6 Talent Acquisition and Retention:

For retention and to acquire talent from within the organization, Banglalink have different
practices to keep employees motivated and focused. These are_
1. Games within the department: Banglalink conduct weekly and monthly games. For
example, for sales department, there is a game of who made the most sales in their
division in Bangladesh. The highest sales maker will get a trip to a country as a reward.
This kind of rewards keeps the competitiveness alive between the employees as a result it
helps in achieving both employee satisfaction and fulfill organizational goals.
2. Game Changer Title: For those employees who brings new ideas in the table are given
this title and also reward for being creative and hard working.
3. Big Events: Banglalink organizes big event yearly such as Banglalink Night where
employees get inspired by sessions conducted by high executives of Banglalink and
VEON. Employees also get the chance to play games and competition to win prizes.
Banglalink organizes various internal engagement such as Pohela boishakh, Family night,
Digithon which allows employees to take part in fun and engaging activities.

4. Exist Interviews: Employees must sit for an exit interview on their last working day to
share overall experience at Banglalink conducted by respective HR Business Partners.

5. Feedback and Grievance Program: Banglalink is a highly compliant company and

follows an objective of maintaining transparency throughout the organization. Employees
has the complete liberty to raise a concern if they feel anything unethical is happening in
the company and because of Banglalink’s non-retaliation policy, any sort of retaliation
against any person who is trying to do the right thing by asking a question or raising a
concern is never tolerated.
Thus, Banglalink maintains several confidential tools for all employees to ask questions
and raise concerns such as talking to a compliance colleague, or enter the concern at the
speak-up portal or even make a call in speak-up line.
 Employee Recognition: Banglalink strives to create a culture where employees are recognized for
exemplary performance. Employees receive different awards based on their performances. Some of
the rewards are:

 On Spot Recognition
 Quarterly Awards
 Long Service Award

3.1.7 HRIS Systems:

Banglalink has been working for a long time to incorporate digitalization into its human
resource management processes. Thus, all the records of employees are kept digitally and
most of the processes have already been automated or digitalized. Banglalink have four own
software application to fulfill different objectives of the employees. These are,
1. V-Lounge: A platform for Business Processes automation, functional collaboration, and
different policies digitalization and management.
2. V-Plan: Organization wide Task Management System to promote and practice objective-
based work management. Employee appraisal also occurs in this application.
3. V-fleet: A digital platform that transformed fleet operation management of the whole
organization.
4. V-People: A platform that caters to HR service (Salary Statement, NOC, Tax certificate,
etc) requirements of individual employees.
5. Lever: Lever is their own software system used to help HR team with recruiting
Candidates. It helps to select, reject and schedule timing to the candidates.

3.1.8 Compensation Management and Extra Benefits:

Banglalink strives to offer a competitive salary. The structure for the salary points are decided
based on market data. Apart from gross salary, employees are also entitled for festival bonus,
yearly performance bonus, medical benefit, provident fund, lunch subsidy, pick and drop service,
gratuity and other benefits based on company policy.
All employees of Banglalink Digital Communications Limited (Banglalink/Company) are report
to work on time and as per schedule and maintains a healthy work life balance.
 The standard office hours for employees are nine (9) hours each scheduled work
day, including one (1) hour break including lunch, prayer etc.
 Flexible working hours are available to employees according to which employees
have the option employees may report at the office any time within 8:00am to
09:00am, and leave after completing the required nine (9) hours.
 During the month of Ramadan, working hours are reduced which are determined
every year at the discretion of Management
3.2 Challenges of these Practices:
Banglalink is the 3rd telecommunication multination company in Bangladesh. It has a very
flexible, casual and collaborative work environment which helps employee to manage their
work-life balance. Even though most of the HR practices are very much up to date and effective
for the employees but after analyzing all the practices, we find out some of practices needs an
upgrade for better management system. These challenges in HR practices of Banglalink is given
below:
1. Complete Dependence on 70:20:10 Methodology for Identifying Training needs is
suggested to be myth by many experts. Because there is no empirical evidence that is
methodology actually works in an organization. This research was exclusively related to
the training and leadership development of executives. There is no evidence that it can be
used throughout the organization. This hindrance the opportunity for employees to
directly experience skills through on the job training programs.
2. Use of Talmundo Software for E-learning session, is not appropriate because this
software mostly works with smooth transition of onboarding recruiters and help to
increase productivity of HR team. It has been mentioned in one article that this software
is mostly suitable of small and mid-size organizations.
3. Multiple HRIS system: As discussed earlier Banglalink have four application for
different purposes, which can clearly confuse an employee. Now a days there are
different one platforms and software in which everything can be merged and control
easily. Four application will cost more for control and different features in these
applications will confuse employees.
4. Upgrading Retention programs: Banglalink has many gaming events to motivate
employees. However, these games can demotivate employee because of not being able to
win any of the games.
5. Flexible Timing: Even though they promote flexible timing but it is not flexible until an
organization can come up with the policy of working from home. In this pandemic
situation, most organization is working from home and it has become hard for the
employees to work in this condition since they have never done it before. Now it is a
crucial time to actually make working hours and working place flexible.

4.Recommendation and Conclusion:

4.1. Recommendation:
1. Less dependency on 70:20:10 Methodology: This methodology should not be the only way
to identify the training needs of the employees. As said before it interferes the opportunity for
employees to try different skills that might be more useful and suitable for them. Along with this
methodology, the HR team should discuss with the employees to find the gaps which needs to be
filled up for high performance.
2.Use of well know E- learning platforms: Instead of using Talmundo which is not a mostly
used platform, using platform like LinkedIn Learning, Lynda, Coursera can give more resources
and better learning experiences to the employees.
3. Collaborative Games for employee retention: Games and competition should be made
through teams not individually. Through mixture strong and weak player, both will be having a
learning experience and will create team spirit among them. Rewards will be distributed among
the team which will motivate more than one person.
4. Work from home: Flexibles timing will only be flexible when there is a policy of working
from home. This will help employees get a different perspective on working style.
5.Use of Workday and Uber for Business: Instead of having four different application why not
have one? There is a very popular software called Workday helps to manage and deliver ser and
administrative tools across financials, HR, planning, talent, payroll, analytics, student and more
from a single system. Furthermore, Instead, of using V-Fleet, there is Uber for Business which is
more user friendly and cost effective.