The role of recruitment, training and development in achieving employees' effectiveness in the banking sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Alruwaili, Naif Fawzi

Abstract

Employees’ effectiveness is a long-term goal for organisations that seek to succeed and continue in the business world, which has become since the last decade of the twentieth century a world where there is no place except for the strong, because of intense competition on the local and international levels. This position has been imposed on business organisations by many factors, headed by globalization, economic and cultural openness and the global financial crisis.

Human capital as a key success factor of business organisations receives the greatest attention especially in service organisations such as hospitals, universities, banks, restaurants etc. This is because the customer does not purchase a commodity directly, but receives goods as a supplement to the service. Therefore, customers are likely to assess the benefit they received through dealing with a certain organisation to get the service, and paying the cost of these benefits.

Banks, as service organisations, rely on effective staff to achieving their strategic goals in terms of competitive advantage, customer service and achieving customer satisfaction through providing a high quality of banking services in an attractive manner. Therefore, the main challenge that faces human resource management is how to practise the related activities in order to gain the most effective employees. The main objective of this thesis is to identify the role of the HRM activities, recruitment and training methods, and employees' development, in achieving employees' effectiveness in Saudi banks. When studying a social phenomenon, focus often exceeds the known variables, to include cultural factors dominant in the research society, and because this study concerns the banking sector in Saudi Arabia, which is governed by Islamic culture, cultural factors will have important effects on HRM activities, especially, recruitment and training in terms of the prevalence of nepotism and cronyism in employment affairs. Therefore, the variables of this study comprised employees' recruitment and employees’ training and development, in addition to social culture and business culture as independent variables, and employees’ effectiveness as the output variable. This study was conducted upon a sample of four banks (two national banks, and two foreign banks) operating in Riyadh city. Data was collected from 512 employees, via a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with senior officials in HR departments in the four banks. The results of qualitative data analysis were fully consistent with the results of analysing quantitative data. The findings showed that the best strategy for employees’ recruitment is one based on using multiple methods of recruitment from all sources. Recruiting employees through coordination with universities was ranked first among recruitment methods, although it can be considered as response to the Saudization Policy, and simulation-based training is the most common in Saudi banks, ranking first among training methods.

Citation

Alruwaili, N. F. (2013). The role of recruitment, training and development in achieving employees' effectiveness in the banking sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (Thesis). University of Hull. Retrieved from https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4220283

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Feb 26, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 23, 2023
• Keywords: Business
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4220283
• Additional Information: Business School, The University of Hull
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2013