UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Kieu Khanh POOR TEAM COOPERATION AT DONGA BANK’S TRADING DEPARTMENT MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Kieu Khanh POOR TEAM COOPERATION AT DONGA BANK’S TRADING DEPARTMENT MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUPERVISOR: Dr. Doan Anh Tuan Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 Table of Contents Executive Summary. 6 CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION .1 DongA Joint Stock Commercial Bank (DongA Bank/ DAB) .1 High turnover rate .2 Poor team cooperation. 27 CHAPTER 2: ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS.
29 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 Lack of updating job descriptions .4 Poor reward system .3 Effectiveness measurement through taking actions. 49 CHAPTER 3: SUPPORTING INFORMATION. 58 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 List of Abbreviations BO Back office DAB DongA Bank FX Foreign Exchange HR Human Resource LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 List of Tables Table 1: The percentage of turnover rate at DongA Bank's Foreign trading department from 2015 to 2017. 10 Table 2: Data of foreign exchange trading profit from January to December, 2017 at DAB.
11 Table 3: Profits of FX trading in interbank and Banknotes trading in 2017. 13 Table 4: Foreign exchange trading profit in 2017 among commercial banks in Vietnam 14 Table 5: Framework of measuring cooperation. 26 Table 6: Estimated costs for updating job description at Trading department. 37 Table 7: Estimated labor cost in Action plan step 1.
44 Table 8: Estimated labor cost in Action plan step 2. 45 Table 9: Estimated labor cost in Action plan step 3. 45 Table 10: Estimated total budget for action plan. 46 Table of Figures Figure 1: DongA Bank's organizational structure.
8 Figure 2: Trading Department's organizational structure. 8 Figure 3: The percentage of turnover rate at DongA Bank's Foreign trading department from 2015 to 2017. 10 Figure 4: Foreign exchange trading profit from January to December, 2017 at DongA Bank. 11 Figure 5: Profits of FX trading in interbank and Banknotes trading in 2017.
13 Figure 6: Working days. 48 Figure 7: Project summary. 48 List of Diagrams Diagram 1: Initial cause-effect map of Foreign Trading Department. 20 Diagram 2: Updated cause-effect map of Foreign Trading Department.
21 Diagram 3: Final cause-effect map of Foreign Trading Department. 33 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 Executive Summary Cooperation is considered as one of the most fundamental aspects of human interaction and for organizations, it has become the main tools for achieving their strategic competitiveness. Moreover, team cooperation also has been found to benefit companies’ sustainability efforts and performances. Clearly, cooperation is more likely to be successful if it is well-managed and well-concerned.
However, DongA Bank’s Trading department has been experiencing high turnover rate as well as low foreign exchange trading profits for many years due to poor cooperation between teams. Using different literature reviews and conducting in-depth interviews among employees at the Trading department, this research aims to define what the main problem is, why it is the main problem, how important it is and how it affect to employees’ work abilities as well as business performance at Trading department. Subsequently, the findings show that employees have some obstacles while cooperating with other teams to work for common goals and how the factors effect to their working performance as well as their personal lives. To be specific, following finding “Poor team cooperation at DongA Bank’s Trading department” as the central problem, the research also presents that two main causes of the problem are lack of updating job descriptions and poor reward system.
It can be seen that in order to enhance effectiveness and efficiency of their employees, it is essential to make sure that they are given clear directions towards their work; therefore, they will know what is expected out of them. In addition, KPIs are essential for measuring performance of the employees to improve reward systems. Thus, if an organization does not have clear job description for their employees, how will it measure performance. As a result, with the two main causes of the problem, this research will show two alternative solutions to solve that problem, to enhance employees’ performances, increase FX profits and decrease turnover rate of employees.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 7 CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 1 Company overview 1.1 DongA Joint Stock Commercial Bank (DongA Bank/ DAB) DongA Bank (DAB) – one of commercial banks in Vietnam – was established on 1st July, 1992. Through more than 25 years of operation in finance and banking industry, with constant development and sustainable growth, DAB has gained many achievements in banking information technology as well as in the quality of services such as personal financial services, services for small and medium businesses, and especially card services. In fact, due to the volatile market, the increase in bad debts and some legal issues, DAB has been going through many difficulties and challenges in recent years; therefore, it was impossible for the bank to stay unaffected. However, with a straightforward point of view towards existing issues, the bank has continually focused on developing organization, restructuring and rearranging operating system, ensuring the effectiveness of operational risk management as well as promoting strengths of technology, products and quality of services to increase customers’ satisfaction as well as to empower DAB to become the leading retail bank in Vietnam.
According to Figure 1, to manage the organization, DAB divides into nine divisions. Importantly, in the business of DAB, Trading department is considered as the most important one in Capital and Trading Division, which is responsible for dealing with and managing the purchase and sale of foreign currencies to make profits for the bank. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 8 Source: DongA Bank’s website (www.vn) Figure 1: DongA Bank's organizational structure 1.2 Trading Department Director of Trading Department Deputy Director of Trading Department FX Trading Banknotes Gold Back (Interbank) Trading Trading Office Figure 2: Trading Department's organizational structure LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 9 With the development of information technology, the foreign exchange market – one of the most liquid markets in the world – is expanding rapidly and trading has become widespread in the market (2). Moreover, Omar and Jones (3) stated that money is what the banks trade in; therefore, currency trading, which is done by the buying and selling of money, is an appropriate product the banks need to focus on to make profits.
Clearly, the Trading Department was established with the aim: (i) to advise the Board of Directors on the development of annual business strategies related to forex trading, gold and banknotes trading; (ii) to directly organize, manage and implement the trading activities in accordance with DAB’s strategy and the State Bank of Vietnam’s regulations; (iii) to analyze and evaluate the trading performances; and (iv) to coordinate with other departments in the Division to complete the general mission of DAB. It can be seen in Figure 2 that the Trading Department is made up of four sections: FX Trading (Interbank), Banknotes Trading, Gold Trading and Back Office. Vo Van Dat – Director of the Department and Mrs. Duong Thi Thuy – Deputy Director are in charge of this department.
However, during this hard time of operation, this department begins to show signs of going down while operating. Therefore, this thesis will indicate the causes and effects of this issue at the Trading Department. 2 Symptoms According to Marlon Wayne (4), it is critical to recognize and distinguish symptoms to define a problem. After the first meeting with employees at the department and based on data from each month in 2017, it can be seen that two main symptoms are reported currently: (i) high turnover rate and (ii) low profit.
To be specific, these symptoms of this department are analyzed as following: 2.1 High turnover rate Woods (5) described human resource issues are one of the most popular internal challenges companies face today. Actually, there are numerous of surveys and researches in many different areas of human resources being conducted by organizations in order to obtain insights and provide the best working environment. Obviously, high turnover rates LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 10 are possibly considered as the most expensive issue businesses face in the industry. Bliss (6) also stated that the cost of employee turnover, including the costs to market a position, find and interview candidates, and undoubtedly, train them for the position for months or even years, is 150% of the employees' annual compensation figure.
Unit: person, percentage Year 2015 2016 2017 Total employees 40 29 19 Number of employees quit their job 13 10 7 Turnover rate (%) 32.84 Table 1: The percentage of turnover rate at DongA Bank's Foreign trading department from 2015 to 2017 38.00% Turnover rate Linear (Turnover rate) 33.00% 2015 2016 2017 Figure 3: The percentage of turnover rate at DongA Bank's Foreign trading department from 2015 to 2017 The above table and chart graph give data on the percentage of turnover rate in Foreign trading department between the year 2015 and 2017. Although the number of staffs quitted their jobs slightly declined, compared to 2015, in 2017 the total number of LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 working staffs fell rapidly, from 40 to 19 persons; thus, the percentage of turnover rate still rose from 32. As a result, it illustrates that the increase of turnover rate at the department should be also seen as a symptom which managers need to focus on now.2 Low profit Unit: Billion dong Month of year 2017 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Revenue 15.50 FX gross profit 14.70 Source: DongA Bank’s financial report (2017) Table 2: Data of foreign exchange trading profit from January to December, 2017 at DAB 18.50 Foreign exchange trading gross profit 14.70 Revenue Expense Foreign exchange trading gross profit Linear (Foreign exchange trading gross profit) Figure 4: Foreign exchange trading profit from January to December, 2017 at DongA Bank LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 The figure 4 illustrates the gross profit of foreign exchange trading from January to December in 2017 at DAB. It is noticeable that in the first month of the year, the profit was 14.87 billion dong; however, it experienced a sharp fall to 3.70 billion dong in December, approximately reduced to 75%.
In particular, the Trading department is responsible for trading gold, foreign currencies as well as ensures liquidity, safety and efficiency of the whole DongA banking system. Thus, according to the organizational structure of the department, there are three main areas including FX trading in interbank, Banknotes trading and gold trading. However, pursuant to Circular No. 38/2012/TT-NHNN of the State Bank of Vietnam (Appendix 1) and Notice No.
176/TB-DAB of DongA Bank (Appendix 2), since 25 August 2015, the bank had suspended trading of gold with passing customers in whole system. Moreover, the business units are only allowed to buy small amount of gold of customers which deposited in the past and the bank is still holding until now. Additionally, gold transactions of customers at the bank rarely arise at this period. Accordingly, the gold trading team having one employee to summarize the trading of gold from the business units and making reports on the state of gold quarterly at the request of the State Bank of Vietnam.
Therefore, the profits of foreign exchange trading at the department mainly come from FX trading in interbank and Banknotes trading.