Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, VN1001509

“Improving working competence of tellers in the Joint
Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development
of Vietnam – Hai Phong Branch”

-1-


DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP
I hereby declare the thesis “Improving working competence of tellers in the Joint
Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam – Hai Phong
Branch”is my work under the guidance of Doctor Pham Thi Nhuan .
The contents are summarized in the learning process, the data on the subject are
honestly obtained through implementing experiments which accurate and truly follow
scientific logic .
This thesis has not been published in any research project
Author

-1-


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I sincerely thank Doctor Pham Thi Nhuan who has dedicatedly supported me with
valuable guidance, suggestions to complete my dissertation “Improving working
competence of tellers in the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and
Development of Vietnam – Hai Phong Branch”
I am grateful to all teachers who have taught me knowledge for two years of
graduate program;
I am forever thankful to my family and my classmates at IEMBA HO3 who have



1.1.3.1. ASK model introduction........................................................................2
1..1.3.2. Elements of ASK model.......................................................................2
1.2. Banking institutions and bank teller....................................................................2
1.2.1. Commercial bank definition.........................................................................2
1.2.2. Bank teller definition....................................................................................2
1.3. Working capacity assessment of bank teller........................................................2
1.3.1. Factors contributing to working capacity of bank teller................................2
1.3.1.1. Attitude..................................................................................................2
1.3.1.2. Skill.......................................................................................................2
1.3.1.3. Knowledge.............................................................................................2
1.3.2. Significance of implementation of working capacity assessment model..........2
1.3.2.1. Significance to banking institutions...............................................................2
Significance to banking institutions............................................................................2
1.3.3.2. Significance to bank teller.........................................................................2
1.3.3.3. Significance to banking customers............................................................2
1.4. Design assessment with opinions of bank manager, bank teller and customer....2
CHAPTER II. CURRENT STATUS OF WORKING COMPETENCE OF BANK
TELLERS AT BIDV – HAI PHONG BRANCH............................................................2
2.1. Introduction of BIDV – Hai Phong branch..........................................................2
2.1.1. History of establishment & development......................................................2
2.1.2. Organization model......................................................................................2
2.1.3. Business results of BIDV - Hai Phong branch in period 2012 – 2014.........2
-4-


2.2. Assessment of working capacity of bank teller at BIDV - Hai Phong Branch....2
2.2.1. General assessment of working capacity of bank teller at BIDV - Hai
Phong Branch.........................................................................................................2



LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: The business results of BIDV Haiphong in period 2012-2014.......................2
Table 2.2. Number of tellers at main office and transaction offices of BIDV Hai Phong
....................................................................................................................................... 2
Table 2.3. Number of tellers by genders:........................................................................2
Table 2.4. Structure of the number of tellers by age.......................................................2
Table 2.5. Education level of tellers at BIDV Hai Phong Branch...................................2
Bảng 2.6. Summary of foreign language, IT skills of tellers at BIDV Hai Phong..........2
Table 2.7. Years of service in BIDV...............................................................................2
Table 2.9:Feedback from BIDV managers about working capacity of bank teller.........2
Table 2.10: Results of feedback from bank tellers..........................................................2
Table 2.11. Ages of surveyed customers.........................................................................2
Table 2.12. Years of using BIDV and some credit institutions that customers are using
as follows.......................................................................................................................2
Table 2.13: Feedback from customers on tellers at BIDV Hai Phong.............................2
Table 2.14: Summary of results of survey from customers, managers, tellers................2
Table 2.15. Summary of reviews from customers through Customers Service about
tellers of BIDV Haiphong from 2012 to 2014................................................................2
Table 3.1: Proposed training program for building work competence............................2

-7-


LIST OF CHARTS & FIGURES

Figure 1.1. ASK Model for capacity assessment............................................................2
Figure 1.2. The ladder of career growth of bank tellers..................................................2

State Bank

NHTM

Commercial Bank

TTCSKH

Customer Service Center

-9-


PREFACE
1. The necessity of chosen topic
The world has entered a new era of economic integration and globalization
which has become an inevitable trend and increasingly drawn attention of a great
number of countries. Banking institutions are not definitely out of this general trend. In
banking business activities, customers usually interact with bank tellers; therefore, their
attitude and working style has a decisive effect on the image and reputation of a bank.
Therefore, knowledge, experience, service attitude, ability to convince
customers, appearance and dress code can increase or decrease service quality.
Nowadays, due to the arrival of a variety of both foreign and domestic commercial
banks, the technological level and banking products offered by banks almost have no
difference, commercial banks can only enhance their competitiveness by increasing
quality of staff’s service. The higher the service quality is, the better competitive
advantage the bank achieves.
In short, customers’ loyalty depends heavily on

their impression when

BIDV- Hai Phong branch to point out the strengths, weaknesses and causes of existing
problems.
(3) Propose a number of measures of improving bank tellers’ working
competence at BIDV - Hai Phong branch and some proposals to implement the
measures mentioned above.
3. Research scope and subject.
- Research scope:
 Data is going to be collected within the period of 2012-2014.
 Time to carry out the study is from July 1st, 2015 to September 1st, 2015.
- Research subject: 45 bank tellers working at BIDV – Hai Phong Branch
4. Research method.
• Research procedure:
-2-


Theory and the reality of the banking operations are combined. In this study, the
statistical survey method is used with the subject of 10 administrators, 45 tellers and
100 customers of the bank. Process can be generalized through the following steps:
- Identify research subject
- Design research through questionnaires and surveys
- Gather information and data
- Make data analysis based on the survey results
- Make conclusions about the research results
• Secondary data collection:
The theoretical and practical bases through information about banking activities
of BIDV - Haiphong branch are collected. This information will be collected from the
bank's websites and internal reports (period of 2012-2014).
• Primary data collection with the aim of assessing tellers’ competence based on:
- Bank managers’ opinions and solutions (obtained through interviews)
- Tellers’ self-assessment opinions

CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL BASES OF WORKING COMPETENCE
OF BANK TELLERS
1.1. WORKING COMPETENCE.
1.1.1 Definition of working competence.
According to Marxist Psychology, humans competence associates with their
own activities, and when it comes to understand the human competence is not a single
mental attribute but is the sum of total individual’s psychological attributes meeting the
operational requirements and ensuring action achieved the desired results.
According to Mac Van Trang (2000), competence is the sum of a an individual’s
properties meeting operational requirements and ensuring the operations be achieved
superior results. Competence is not a general concept but it belongs to a particular
activity, such as mathematical ability, capacity of political activism, teaching capacity .
According to Rycher (2004), working competence is able to meet the
requirements or conduct a successful job. This capacity includes cognitive and noncognitive aspects. Foreman-Peck and Winch (2004) stated that the ability to work is a
mixture of action, knowledge, values and purpose to change the context. In short,
competence can be understood as the combination of personal attributes defined in the
operation in particular job, it represents competence of the individual to fit the job or
not.
In general, working competence is knowledge, skills and abilities that bank
tellers should have to satisfy work requirements in order to perform

the job

successfully. In different profession, there will be different specific requirements for job
performance. Also according to Mac Van Trang (2000), the ability to work is
constituted by the following three components: Professional knowledge, Practical
skills, and Working attitudes

-5-



and development of human resource. To properly assess job performance of
employees, managers need to understand purpose of assessment to organizations:
- Improving job performance and providing feedback to staff about the extent of
work process to measures to improve and improve work performance.
- Assessment of working capacity helps to organize the data indicating likelihood
of employee promotion. Through this assessment, organization can have a basis for
human resources planning.
- Helping employees to adjust and fix errors in work process, and forming a basis
for employee’s encouragement.
- Assessing working capacity to predict future demand of human resources, and
make training plans and plan for development of human resources.
- Through capacity assessment conducted by staff, managers can adjust task
assignment to match employees’ capacity and detect potentials in employees to plan for
further personal development.
1.1.2.3. Roles of working capacity assessment to economy.
Human resources are considered the most important factor in a business or an
organization. Meanwhile, business entity is an important part of economy and the main
components generating GDP. Therefore, human resource significantly contributes to
the economy. HR management contributes to solving social aspects of economic or
other labor issues. Providing workers with suitable work and fulfilled life is a problem
of the whole society. Work capability assessment for the economy is defined as
follows:
- Contribute to improving quality of human resources in socio-economic
development process. Human resources, labor resources are a decisive factor for
exploitation, utilization, protection and other renewable resources. Between human
resources, capital, natural resources, infrastructure engineering, science and technology

-7-




knowledge, skills, abilities and other features that candidates/employees must have in
order to perform successfully a task or a job:
 Knowledge: includes the knowledge necessary to perform one or more
tasks. Knowledge can be expressed in two forms: qualification and
training or, more specifically a list of detailed knowledge required.
 • Skills: to be understood as a list of the skills necessary to do the job
such as: hard skills, soft skills, management skills, leadership skills ...
Skills are formed when learning, training and then mastering (practice) a
certain kind of job: show maturity level in performing one or more
operations.
 Abilities: inherent ability of a person to perform work: eg singing skills,
ability to carry heavy loads, ..
Other factors: including personal qualities, personality, hobbies
(ii) According to ASK model, competency standards include Knowledge; Skills;
Attitude which are required to undertake a specific job position. And the number of job
positions in organization must be equal to the number of capacity standards. Example:
Capacity standard of tellers in BIDV Hai Phong branch.
And to understand staff weakness and strength, the current status of human
resource at an organization, it calls for competency standards; and what are
competency standards and how to build competency standard? Benjamin Bloom (1956)
proposed the model ASK to address this issue and Shubha Rajan (2012) has continued
to develop measures.

-9-


Competence


- Skills (skill) is understood as the ability to perform specific tasks, turning
knowledge into action. Skills can be classified into several types, depending on the
purpose of classification. Generally it can be divided into three categories: life skills,
expertise and working skills. In expertise, there are kinds of skills, such as hard skills,
soft skills and mixed skill. According to Dave (1975) skills are divided into levels such
as: imitation (observations and behavioral stereotypes), applications (perform certain
actions by following instructions), adjust (with each situation), creative application
(become natural reflex) (Dave, 1975). Hard skills are technical skills, professional
skills, helping employees perform specific work under certain criteria. Soft skills
include skills such as communication skills, behavioral skills, listening skills,
negotiation skills ... Soft skills depends heavily on audience of interaction and
therefore it is difficult to build a common standard. Among two skills, soft skills play a
larger role in success of a person. According to Daniel Goleman, hard skills account
for only 15%, whereas 85% of the soft skills for success of every human being. To
succeed, employees need to know how to combine both types of skills.
- Knowledge is understood as the capacity for data collection, capacity to
understand problems (comprehension), capacity to apply (application), capacity to
analyses (analysis), synthesis capacity (synthesis), capacity of assessment (evaluation).
These are basic competencies that an individual needs to converge upon receiving a
job. More complex work requires higher level of capacity. These capabilities will be
specified according to the characteristics of each organization
-11-


1.2. Banking institutions and bank teller
1.2.1. Commercial bank definition
Credit Institutions Law by National Assembly X on December 12 1997 defined:
commercial banks were a form of credit institutions performing all banking activities
and operating other related businesses. This law defines: Credit institutions are
established under the provisions of this law and other provisions of law relating




Receiving and processing customer transactions such as transacting
accounts, savings transactions, transfers, currency exchange ... according
to the bank’s regulations;



Performing collecting revenue and expenditure in cash from customers
within transaction limit;



Reconciling cash at the end of trading day;



Performing daily report after the close of trading hours;



Filing documents of daily transactions in accordance with regulations of
the bank, storing and managing customer records in accordance with
regulations of the bank



Performing other duties as assigned by management





Preparation Skills

Attitude and good looking appearance


There are professional ethics, respect for organizational regulations, rules
and labor discipline;

Tellers



Professional working style, teamwork and independent working skils.



Good looking appearance

Head of tellers
Head of teams

Director/Deputy director Branch director
Manager/Deputy managers Head of CS at HO

Figure 1.2. The ladder of career growth of bank tellers
Source: BIDV



-15-