Luận Văn Poor Team Cooperation At Donga Bank’s Trading Department.doc

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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

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

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ............................................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER 1: PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION ............................................................. 7
1 Company overview ...................................................................................................... 7
1.1 DongA Joint Stock Commercial Bank (DongA Bank/ DAB) ............................... 7
1.2 Trading Department ............................................................................................... 8
2 Symptoms ..................................................................................................................... 9
2.1 High turnover rate .................................................................................................. 9
2.2 Low profit ............................................................................................................ 11
3 Problem identification ................................................................................................ 14
3.1 Potential problems................................................................................................ 14
3.1.1 High workload ............................................................................................... 14
3.1.2 Poor team cooperation ................................................................................... 17
3.1.3 Market condition ........................................................................................... 18
3.2 Validating problems ............................................................................................. 22
3.2.1 Managers’ perspectives ................................................................................. 23
3.2.2 Employees’ perspectives ............................................................................... 24
3.3 Main problem ....................................................................................................... 24
3.4 Consequences ....................................................................................................... 27
CHAPTER 2: ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS............................................................. 29
1 Cause validation ......................................................................................................... 29
1.1 Potential causes .................................................................................................... 29
1.1.1 Personality differences .................................................................................. 29

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1.1.2 Poor communication ..................................................................................... 29
1.1.3 Lack of updating job descriptions ................................................................. 30
1.1.4 Poor reward system ....................................................................................... 30
1.2 Validating causes ................................................................................................. 31
2 Alternative solutions .................................................................................................. 33
3 Action plan ................................................................................................................. 42
3.1 Task handling ....................................................................................................... 43
3.2 Gantt chart ............................................................................................................ 47
3.3 Effectiveness measurement through taking actions ............................................. 48
4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 49
CHAPTER 3: SUPPORTING INFORMATION ......................................................... 50
1 Methodology (Qualitative research – In-depth interviews) ....................................... 50
2 Interviewees’ Demographic ....................................................................................... 51
3 Interview Guide .......................................................................................................... 51
References ......................................................................................................................... 53
Appendices ........................................................................................................................ 58

4
List of Abbreviations
BO Back office
DAB DongA Bank
FX Foreign Exchange
HR Human Resource

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 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

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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. Moreover, Ashraf (1) stated that job
descriptions also lay foundation for key performance indicators (KPIs). 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.

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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.

8
Source: DongA Bank’s website (www.dongabank.com.vn)
Figure 1: DongA Bank's organizational structure
1.2 Trading Department
Director of
Trading
Department
Deputy Director of
Trading Department
FX Trading
(Interbank)
Banknotes
Trading
Gold
Trading
Back
Office
Figure 2: Trading Department's organizational structure

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. Specifically,
Mr. 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

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 (%) 32.50 34.48 36.84
Table 1: The percentage of turnover rate at DongA Bank's Foreign trading department from 2015
to 2017
38.00%
37.00%
36.84%
36.00%
35.00%
34.48%
Turnover rate
34.00%
Linear (Turnover rate)
33.00%
32.50%
32.00%
31.00%
30.00%
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

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working staffs fell rapidly, from 40 to 19 persons; thus, the percentage of turnover rate
still rose from 32.5% to 36.84%.
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.
2.2 Low profit
Unit: Billion dong
Month of year 2017 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Revenue 15.39 13.43 13.64 11.84 10.77 8.25 9.77 7.41 6.77 6.27 5.76 5.20
Expense 0.52 0.23 0.39 0.64 1.03 3.09 1.08 0.47 0.87 1.02 1.14 1.50
14.87 13.20 13.25 11.20 9.74 5.16 8.69 6.94 5.90 5.25 4.62 3.70
FX gross profit
Source: DongA Bank’s financial report (2017)
Table 2: Data of foreign exchange trading profit from January to December, 2017 at DAB
18.00
16.00
d
o
n
g
14.00
B
i
l
l
i
o
n
12.00
10.00
8.00
6.00
4.00
Month
2.00
0.00
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Revenue 15.39 13.43 13.64 11.84 10.77 8.25 9.77 7.41 6.77 6.27 5.76 5.20
Expense 0.52 0.23 0.39 0.64 1.03 3.09 1.08 0.47 0.87 1.02 1.14 1.50
Foreign exchange trading gross profit 14.87 13.20 13.25 11.20 9.74 5.16 8.69 6.94 5.90 5.25 4.62 3.70
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

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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.
Based on DongA Bank’s financial report, the profits of FX trading in interbank
and Banknotes trading in 2017 are summarized in Table 3 and Figure 5 below:
Unit: Billion dong
Month of 2017 FX Trading in Interbank Banknotes Trading
1 2.19 12.68
2 4.77 8.43
3 11.54 1.71
4 7.69 3.51
5 7.90 1.84
6 3.92 1.24
7 5.27 3.42
8 1.44 5.50
9 1.92 3.98
10 2.37 2.88

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Month of 2017 FX Trading in Interbank Banknotes Trading
11 2.00 2.62
12 0.67 2.03
Source: DongA Bank’s financial report (2017)
Table 3: Profits of FX trading in interbank and Banknotes trading in 2017
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
FX Trading in Interbank Banknotes Trading
Figure 5: Profits of FX trading in interbank and Banknotes trading in 2017
As can be seen in figure 5, the profits of FX trading in interbank and Banknotes
trading during the year of 2017 also had the same down trend as the total gross profit of
foreign exchange trading at the department showed in figure 4. To be specific, in January,
the profit of FX trading started at 2.19 billion dong, then fell to 0.67 billion dong at the
end of the year 2017. Relative to the profit of Banknotes trading, it also reached at 12.68
billion dong in January and decrease to 2.03 billion dong in December, 2017.
In addition, Huyen Anh (7) illustrated that Foreign exchange trading is a service
sector that helps banks enhance their profitability and capital adequacy ratio. Therefore,
not only current four big banks in Vietnam banking industry such as Vietcombank,
VietinBank, Agribank or BIDV, medium-sized banks like DAB such as MB, Sacombank,

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Techcombank, ACB or Eximbank also pushed up the foreign exchange business.
According to the table 4 below, it gives data about the foreign exchange profits in 2017
of medium-sized banks mentioned above such as Sacombank, Techcombank, Eximbank,
MBbank, ACB and DAB. It is clear that in comparison with the other commercial banks,
DongA Bank had the low foreign exchange profit, at 102.52 billion dong, while
Sacombank had the high one in the same year, at 343.87 billion dong. Although the profit
of DAB was higher than 100 billion dong, it was still considered as low level among
commercial banks in Vietnam (Appendix 3).
Unit: Billion dong
Foreign exchange trading profit in 2017
Name of commercial banks Profit
Sacombank 343.87
Techcombank 278.58
Eximbank 227.83
MBbank 201.77
ACB 236.73
DongA Bank 102.52
Source: Commercial banks’ financial reports (2017)
Table 4: Foreign exchange trading profit in 2017 among commercial banks in Vietnam
Overall, low foreign exchange profit can be considered as a symptom which needs
to observe to investigate potential problems.
3 Problem identification
3.1 Potential problems
According to the analyses depending on the financial reports, the meeting and in-
depth interviews with members of Trading Department at DAB, some potential problems
are listed as following:
3.1.1 High workload
Based on the analysis of high turnover rate at the department, although the number
of employees quitting their jobs fell slightly between 2015 and 2017, there was still an
overall upward trend in the turnover rate.
In fact, Mr. Dat – our director – stated that the actual number of employees’
demand at the department was 25 persons; however, the current employees at the

15
department were 19 and human resources department have not recruited enough
employees immediately; hence, it is not enough employees to assign and support work to
have the best work performance, which can easily increase the amount of workload
causing job stress for the remaining employees. Furthermore, during the time of
interview, Ms. Tam – current team leader of back office (BO) also shared that her team
supports FX trading team to check and confirm deals with other banks, as well as takes
part in tracking money transfers, contacting partners and implementing over twenty daily
and monthly reports; thus, it is extremely stressful and there are a lot of work for only 3
back office members to do.
In the study done by Kulachai and Amaraphibal (8), job stress is defined as
“pressure condition individuals have to face such as opportunities, obstacle, loss,
incident, uncertainty outcome, and the importance of outcome”. Specifically, it can be
seen as positive and negative stress impact due to sometimes it can enhance individuals to
finish their jobs. Further, they also highlighted that job satisfaction, which is a condition
that individuals satisfy or dissatisfy with their jobs, has relationships with job stress since
job stress can lead to a lower degree of job satisfaction. In addition, certain studies also
found a negative relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention (9-11).
According to Batt and Valcour (12), turnover is a crucial subject matter for management,
especially in the fast-paced market of the 21st
century. Importantly, due to the company’s
obligations, lack of staff or extra duties assigned by managers, there will be more work to
do causing stressful for employees; as a result, they will dissatisfy with their current jobs
and want to leave the organization to find other opportunities (13). It can be said that
turnover is increased by stress and the huge amount of work related stress has got a great
potential to enhance the employee turnover (14). To sum up, job stress – a problematic
element – causes job dissatisfaction and leads to turnover intention of employees in this
department.
Besides job stress at the department, work-life imbalance is also an issue needed to
concern. According to Mr. Nhut – FX Trading staff, Ms. Thao – Back office staff and
Ms. Thuy – Senior of Banknotes Trading, with the decrease in the number of current

16
staffs at the department, it will create high workload with countless assignments for the
remaining staffs which need to accomplish on time as well as meet the expectations of
the manager. For instance, they must to work under pressure for long hours, sometimes
taking work home and lack of breaks affecting much on their leisure activities and work-
life balance.
Based on the research of Bhalla (15), work-life balance refers to “the desire of
both employees and employers to achieve a balance between workplace obligations and
personal responsibilities”. Indeed, Whittard and Burgess (16) explained that effective
work-life programs such as flexible work schedules, telecommuting, cooperation or job
sharing provide benefits to both employees and employers. Certainly, employees that can
better manage both work and family should be more satisfied, resulting in higher
productivity, job satisfaction, and organizational loyalty. Thus, there might be increased
job performance and decreased employee turnover.
Moreover, following the company’s compulsory working schedule, full-time
employees work a 40-hour week and there is no flexible schedule allowed, due to limited
employees at the department at that time, if there were a lot of work needed to be
accomplished on time, especially at the time of being audited, the current remaining
employees were not able to finish all required jobs during office hours; thus, sometimes
they need to work overtime from 2 to 3 hours or to take work home. Parkes and Langford
(17) also emphasized that the greater the number of hours worked each week, the lower
the level of work-life balance. For instance, in case of employees who have their own
families such as Mrs. Thuy, Ms. Thuy or Ms. Thao, they found that it was difficult for
them to work long hours due to they were unable to meet their family responsibilities,
and to maintain a good balance between work and their personal lives. Moreover, when
employees spent more time working, they did not receive any good rewards or
recognition; thus, they felt dissatisfied and were not willing to accept work demands as
well as sacrifice their family life. As a result, it could rise their turnover intention in the
organization to find more flexible working environment to work for.

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3.1.2 Poor team cooperation
According to Table 2 – Data of DongA Bank’s foreign exchange trading profit in
2017, it can be seen that there was a decrease in the revenue of foreign exchange trading,
from 15.39 billion dong in January to 5.20 billion dong in December, approximately
66.21% of decline. Further, Mrs. Thuy shared that due to bad debts and some legal issues,
DAB has been facing with many challenges and difficulties in operation, which affecting
directly on the revenue. Indeed, before the year of 2016, DAB had been granted credit
limits in the interbank market with 31 banks operating in Vietnam at that time. However,
during the difficult times, the number of partners who wanted to have long business
relationships with DAB also fell significantly to just under 20 banks such as
Vietcombank, BIDV, ACB, MBBank, HDBank, Maritime Bank or TP Bank. Thus, it can
be considered as an external issue affecting negatively on trading activities which causes
the decrease in trading frequency.
Importantly, as is shown at Trading Department's organizational structure in figure
2, the department divided into four teams and officially, each team has its specialize
responsibilities, its own requirements and forms to implement the jobs (18). On the other
hand, based on the current situation, each team only focuses on their daily jobs, their own
assignments and tend to less cooperate with other teams at work unless having the
superiors’ directions. For instance, as mentioned above, FX trading in interbank,
Banknotes trading and Gold trading teams – known as front offices – were the three main
teams focusing on making profits for the bank and back office had its main task of
supporting whole business and processing documents at the department. However, during
the period of implementing project tasks, when members of front offices want to have
more information to understand clearly about the business and need the help of back
office team, the members of BO always said they had a lot of works needed to prioritize
completing first and were unwilling to brainstorm and compromise, share ideas and
support other teams on project tasks although it was their responsibilities; thus, projects
were fragmented and often poorly approached.

18
In addition, a manager plays an important role in planning, coordinating and
implementing the existing directions (19). Longenecker et al (20) stated that planning has
a vital role in organizations; and particularly, it will influence all parts of the banks from
strategic issues to operational ones. Thus, it can be said that “failure to plan effectively
leads to failure to effectively organize and control operations”. It can be seen that, after
the monthly meetings with Board of Directors, main director of the department always
transfers briefly the information of work assignments to each team without holding the
department’s meetings to discuss with members of four teams to make action plans and to
cooperate with them in implementing the job effectively. Actually, when a manager puts
his/her teams together to collaborate and solve a problem, it is important that each
member has a clearly defined role within the teams because if team members become
distracted and are unclear about their roles, they are more likely to try to do what
someone else is doing, resulting in ineffective planning at the department and the
negative impact on team work.
Hence, poor team cooperation could be considered as a problem which causing
ineffective planning and low profit of foreign exchange trading.
3.1.3 Market condition
As can be seen in Table 2, the expenses of foreign exchange trading started at 0.52
billion dong at the first month of the year and then went up to 1.5 billion dong in
December, 2017. It can be said that because of the fluctuation in foreign exchange rates
in the market, the decline in the number of DAB’s partners and the bank’s market
position, DAB had limited opportunities to choose; hence, employees were unable to deal
good prices from suppliers to cut down unnecessary costs. Consequently, with the effect
of market condition, the decrease in the revenue and the increase in the expenses, it
causes the low level of foreign exchange trading profit during the previous year.
Clearly, in trading activities, employees, also called traders, must accept what the
market provides at its various gaps. For instance, foreign currency prices fluctuate and
markets are typically more volatile at the start of the trading day, and may become quieter
as the day progresses. Therefore, if traders have specific strategies for the market open,

19
those may not work later in the day and different strategies should be used instead. As a
result, to trade well in the change of market, besides employees’ education, trading skills
and technology skills, it is more important for them to be flexible and be confident in
making decisions whether to buy or sell, following common day trading strategies, basic
charts and patterns, and how to limit losses as soon as possible.
As Mrs. Thuy – Deputy Director of Foreign trading department said that it is
important to emphasize on employees’ abilities, work spirits and flexibilities in the
current working environment to enhance business performance; especially, employees’
confidence in trading is a necessity to speed up the trading process and to restrict time-
consuming work affecting other teams. According to Gibbons et al. (21) and Nielsen et
al. (22), confidence is a positive attribute that increasing an individual's self-esteem as
well as a key factor in workplace well-being and morale that cannot be ignored. In
contrast, lack of confidence is associated with low self-esteem and could reduce job
performance (23). Furthermore, it is important for all employees to preserve and increase
their confidence while working to accomplish their work effectively and efficiently to
promote business development.
Overall, it can be seen that market condition is also the element that Trading
department needs to deal with due to it could affect traders’ behaviors as well as business
performances.
To sum up all potential problems having at the department, the diagram 1 which is
the initial cause-effect map of the department has been developed as following:

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Stressful
Symptoms
staffs
High Job
workload
Work-life
dissatisfaction High
turnover
imbalance
rate
Poor
Ineffective
Decrease in
Decrease in
cooperation in
trading
teams planning revenue Low
frequency
profit
Market
Lack of Time- Increase
confidence in consuming in in expense
condition
work trading
Diagram 1: Initial cause-effect map of Foreign Trading Department
Last but not least, in order to check the relationships between variables in the
initial cause-effect map as well as define new findings including new variables and
relationships based on both literature and data from the organization, the purpose of the
updated cause-effect map is to present an updated and more accurate context of the
central problem to be investigated in the validating part.
According to Taormina and Gao (24), work enthusiasm is related to the degree of
an employee’s willingness to do their work, such as the extent of an employee’s
commitment to a company, the levels of job satisfaction, and a variety of other aspects,
including how willing employees are to do their assignments, and even to take on
additional responsibilities. Moreover, it reflects the interactions between workers and
their work environment. Besides, enthusiasm contributes to productivity and enhances
employees to fully engage themselves in their work roles to have the best work
performances (25). Therefore, if high workload continues to exist in the workplace, staff
members will have low level of work enthusiasm, which can affect negatively their
efforts in executing their jobs and also influence the organizational performance.

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As reviewed in the literature, empowerment is defined as a type of power sharing
and is a set of behaviors undertaken by leader and other team members to help
individuals realize self-management as well as to increase their task-related motivation
and reduce their feeling of powerlessness (26). Based on the current situation of the
department, it can be seen the low level of empowerment in the workplace. Hence,
employees’ productivity can be fell off unpredictably involving in the process of their
current works and the financial performances of the company.
As a result, in relation to some new findings based on literature reviews and
following to the variables above in the initial cause-effect map, the updated cause-effect
map has been presented as below:
High
workload
Poor
cooperation in
teams
Market
condition
Decrease in
work
enthusiasm
Stressful
staffs
Job
dissatisfaction
Work-life
imbalance
Ineffective Decrease in
trading
planning
frequency
Lack of Time-
confidence in consuming in
work trading
Decrease in
empowerment
Symptoms
High
turnover
rate
Decrease in
revenue Low
profit
Increase
in expense
Diagram 2: Updated cause-effect map of Foreign Trading Department

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3.2 Validating problems
In Cedoline’s (27) study, workload is defined as employees’ perception the
amount of work they have to do is beyond normal. Further, Weiner (28) also stated that
workload consists of various pressures affecting the performance and reactions of
employees. Markedly, it is claimed that employees in the education sector have more
workload than employees working in other sectors (29) and excessive workload as well
as time pressures will cause work stress, work-life imbalance and turnover intention
significantly more than other factors (30). Therefore, in accordance with previous
literature reviews, it can be said that a high workload will report high levels of stress,
cause work-life imbalance and increase the turnover intention due to the addition
assignments to their current workload (31).
Clearly, cooperation is defined as a central aspect of coworkership (32) and is
extremely important in creating well-functioning workplace, in which team members feel
comfortable among one another and believe they are doing good job together (33). Thus,
when team cooperation is high, team members turn to each other for advice and are more
quickly in making decision; as a result, they will speed up the tasks performed in the
team, decrease the workload and boost the business development (33). Moreover,
according to Ståhl C et al. (34), cooperation contributes to improve the quality in
employees’ work ability and helps increase the individuals’ confidence in making
contacts with team members as well as top management, which they were hesitant to do
before. Last but not least, a cooperative team also could increase the better understanding
between colleagues in different units and decrease the concerns about not knowing where
to work in organizations.
Besides workload and cooperation in organizations, based on Tai VW and Chou
RK (35)’s research, market condition could affect traders’ transaction behavior such as
their confidence or their prejudice. In addition, due to the up and down markets, it
influences on number of transactions (35). It must be noticed that one of the important
features of the market is change, which means “the market is not in the same condition
during all the period” (36). Consequently, it will affect directly traders’ decisions in

23
buying or selling assets, resulting gain or loss profits in trading activities. Therefore, an
experienced, skilled and decisive trader is a must at the department to improve the quality
as well as work performance. However, market condition can be seen as an external
problem due to the impact of market liquidity, market information, price volatility,
competitors or the government's foreign exchange management policy. For this reason, it
is unable to solve this problem for the Trading department.
Pointedly, Hansen RS (37) and Vartika (38) stated that as the work tasks are
becoming more and more challenging, effective team cooperation will be the best chosen
strategy to bring a positive change in the workplace. It is fairly clear from the literature
that if employees work together and support each other towards a common goal, they can
share the workload and team members can do the part they are good at and for what they
are qualified and then enjoy doing assigned tasks. In addition, when working with a
cooperative team, employees will go through long discussions and group interactions that
give them opportunities to get new perspectives to analyze various situations, as well as
the chances of learning work experiences or new things from other members of the team.
Thus, they will be able to bring out more ideas and foster both individual and team
knowledge to know how to deal with and reduce the risks in the market effectively (38).
Considering all above, it can be said that if managers take considerations to solve poor
team cooperation problem at the Trading department first, they could improve the issues
relating to high workload and market condition more effectively and efficiently.
In order to validate and confirm the main problem of the department, the further
information collected from the interviews are summarized as following:
3.2.1 Managers’ perspectives
Mr. Vo Van Dat – Director of Foreign trading department said focusing on
improving internal work firstly to boost business development and cooperation over unit
boundaries is a vital factor. Moreover, employees need to work toward the common goal
and make sure them taking their responsibilities for the work as whole groups, rather than
working alone and taking individual responsibility. Noticeably, if having problems at the

24
department, team members who are responsible for solving those could request the other
sections to coordinate and get supports to find solutions quickly and accurately.
Additionally, Mrs. Thuy – Deputy Director of Foreign trading department and Ms.
Tam – current team leader of back office also claimed that lack of team cooperation at the
department is the biggest problem and due to the lack of cooperation among teams, it
makes the internal work overloaded and occurs the shifts in job responsibilities between
teams.
3.2.2 Employees’ perspectives
Ms. Thuy, Ms. Thao and Ms. Hong illustrated that all co-workers are friendly but
they do not cooperate much in work. Actually, each team only focus on their own work
and does not voluntarily support other teams unless being required by directors.
Therefore, the work sometimes overloaded causing more tired while doing job.
Additionally, all remaining staffs agreed that poor cooperation sometimes makes
them hard to get advices and supports in work as well as valuable information to learn
while working. Especially, as Mr. Nhut and Mr. Hau – new employees at the department
– also stated that it will be harder for new employees to integrate into the environment to
learn their seniors’ experiences on-the-job and to have opportunities showing their work
abilities.
Finally, according to in-depth interviews, all variables and the literature, poor team
cooperation can be considered as a central problem influencing the operation of DongA
Bank’s Foreign trading department at this time.
3.3 Main problem
Heavey C and Murphy E (39) stated that in organizations, working together in
teams often involves interdependence, which naturally requires cooperation. Generally, in
terms of cooperation, with its importance in operations, some researchers emphasize that
it has varied conceptual meanings as well as has evolved from many aspects of
theoretical foundations (40-42). For instance, cooperation is described as a crucial impact
to business success (40), contributes to organizational performances (41), as well as
enhances group effectiveness (42). Furthermore, Pinto MB and Pinto JK (43) also

25
demonstrate that cooperation could be defined as “the quality of task and interpersonal
relations when different functional areas work together to accomplish organizational
tasks”. Specifically, employees in high cooperation tend to understand and be affected by
others’ ideas, find information and communicate about tasks more effectively (43).
Accordingly, as suggested by Ton Voogt (44), to measure cooperation to improve
the effectiveness of the organizational actions, managers could consider to apply the
framework for cooperation which consists of nine conditions such as specific functional
processes, structures, mindset and skills in organizations. Thus, the detail framework is
presented as Table 5 below:
No. Conditions Measurement
1 The quality of the goal - Connected by supporting or opposing each other
setting of all cooperating - Not connected
partners
2 The quality of the cultural To be measured:
preferences in thinking and - in tasks managers tell to stimulate workers.
behavior - in the reinforcements given to workers when showing one of
these behaviors
- in withholding reinforcements or punishing when showing
specify behavior
- in a generic general preference: not favorable for cooperation
- in situational preferences: favorable for cooperation
3 The quality of ideas on self- To be measured by:
performances in - Dominance in self-concept of positive experiences with
cooperation building cooperation
- Confidence in overcoming cooperation obstacles
- Openness to others cultural ideas and behavioral preferences
4 The quality of the ideas on To be measured by:
others readiness, - Dominance of negative cooperative behavior of others over
willingness, competence to positive examples in the evaluation of others
cooperate. - Openness to experiment in building cooperation with others
by start “giving”
5 The quality of distances that To be measured with:
have to be bridged starting - Understanding each other professional language (functional
and continue cooperation. different)
- Having a common language to cooperate in projects (the
common project management language)

26
No. Conditions Measurement
- Competence to bridge distances
6 The quality of complexity. To be measured in handling complexities.
- The competence to explain and make all more simple
- The ability to start with rough guesses before calculating all in
detail
7 The quality of the To be measured by:
communication structure. The rules/practice for communicating:
- only thought the official lines: not favorable
- also mutual adjustment: favorable
When communicating:
- only after trouble: not favorable
- preparing when it is not necessary: favorable
Is communicating well structured?
- in time: regular? or not?
8 The quality of the practice, To be measured in the tactics that are used by employees.
the behavioral sequence, to - Favorable tactics: Continue, only change when the other
build cooperation. changes
- Not favorable tactics: Over punishment;…
9 The quality of specific To be measured in the level of performance in practicing these
cooperation skills behaviors:
- Offering cooperation by sharing differences
- Monitoring others behavior and own behavioral effects on
others
- Act direct when others act uncooperative: have a talk
- Willing to forgive and make a new start.
- Willing to fight for better cooperative conditions
- Regular scheme of talks on the progress in the cooperation
Source: Ton Voogt’s research (2014)
Table 5: Framework of measuring cooperation
Consequently, based on the above framework, in the context of DongA Bank’s
Trading department, it could fairly sure about the poor team cooperation issue happening
at the department. For example, in the transaction of deposit and receive money in the
interbank market, it needs to have cooperation between FX staffs, BO staffs and
managers to make sure the transaction process be carried out accurately and smoothly.
Generally, it takes about 10 minutes for FX staffs to receive, analyze and execute
transactions when they have foreign currency transaction demands from customers;

27
subsequently, it takes about 15 minutes for BO staffs to check the transactions, prepare
documents and submit the approval after receiving ticket deals from FX staffs; and after
that, if managers approve, BO staffs will handle the transaction in accordance with
DAB’s process and accounting system. Therefore, it can be seen that the total transaction
time is about 30 minutes. However, during this period, the total time may be extended by
more than 1 hour due to staffs of two teams were not too active and did not have
interaction enough to cooperate tightly with each other to accomplish tasks soonest.
Moreover, FX staffs seem to be uncertain when dealing transactions with other banks
leading to much time to complete one transaction, while BO staffs were not enthusiastic
in supporting. Thus, depending on the measurement above, it can be seen that the
department are in low quality conditions including the quality of the goal setting of all
cooperating partners, behaviors, ideas on self-performances, communication structure
and skills in cooperation.
3.4 Consequences
Obadia C (45) stated that team cooperation is about working and solving problem
together to achieve mutual goals as well as have better business performance. According
to Pinto MB et al. (34)’s study, the consequences of cooperation could be divided into
task outcomes and psycho-social outcomes. Indeed, task outcomes relate to factors which
involved at the department’s actual implementation such as time, budget and
performance; whereas, psychosocial outcomes refer to satisfaction, productivity,
depression and quality of life.
Undoubtedly, there is no individual that could have all information, enough
sufficient understanding and resources to make good decisions and accomplish assigned
tasks; thus, teams are used to support each other in these contexts (46). Specifically,
using a team with high cooperation and can do the jobs effectively will reduce the
processing time and save costs. In fact, due to each employee has different strength and
weakness, different perspective, opinion as well as the way to implement jobs, top
management level could receive better decisions and better business performances in
various aspects from teams rather than the one from individual.

28
In addition to task outcomes, it can be said that psychosocial outcomes have
relationships with quality of employees’ life and their behavior outcomes (47).
Accordingly, high team cooperation results in positive effect on psychosocial outcomes
that employees tend to be happy and satisfied, which helps increase employees’ work
abilities as well as their positive attitudes. On the other hand, if the department has low
cooperation, it will have negative effect on psychosocial outcomes making employees
unhappy, anxious and unconfident to express their ideas and request supports from other
team members.
In short, team cooperation is crucial “to the successful jobs implementation and
to the effective performance of whole department” (48) and is illustrated as the central
problem at the department now. Therefore, in this case, if poor team cooperation still
occurs and the management does not have any processes to improve, it will continue
affecting negatively on trading performances and the whole profits of the department.
Hence, it is necessary to find the solution for this problem as soon as possible to increase
profits and enhance the organization’s sustainable development.

29
CHAPTER 2: ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS
1 Cause validation
1.1 Potential causes
In line with the previous analysis and based on literature reviews, some potential
causes of the central problem are identified as below:
1.1.1 Personality differences
Generally, when employees step into their workplace, they will bring various
backgrounds, personalities, beliefs and goals into their work. According to Wong et al.
(49), personality refers to “an individual’s preferred or typical way of behaving, thinking
and feeling”. It can be seen that an individual’s values could influence behavior in the
workplace and personality is likely to be more direct measure of actual behavior. Chen
CC et al. (50) also illustrates that cooperation is a system of two or more persons
focusing on cooperative activities. Thus, in case of team cooperation, it is important to
understand personality differences in the workplace could have relationships with
cooperation, which affect employees’ job performance and job satisfaction. As a result,
based on personality differences, managers and employees or employees and employees
will have diverse ways to work together, and it may affect negatively the way of
implementing assignments as well as their relationships in the workplace if they do not
understand and satisfied each other.
1.1.2 Poor communication
Braver SL and Wilson L (51) classified that communication among coworkers
could enhance cooperation in the workplace due to it removes some uncertainty in the
relationship and misunderstanding. Actually, communication is recognized as a vital key
to a successful and healthy work environment, where can generate employee satisfaction,
engagement and enhance organizational performance. In other words, with
communication, employees will be more cooperative and motivated if they are given
sufficient information (52).

30
It can be seen communication consists of sharing and using information while
ambiguity results from a lack of information, managers’ use of proper communication
practices should offer an effective means to increase cooperation and reduce employee
ambiguity (53). Noticeably, verbal, face-to-face communication is the most effective and
most appropriate for rapidly changing environments where employees are required to
quickly adjust their actions. Moreover, it allows for timely exchange, feedback,
evaluation and cost-saving in solving the problem. However, it needs to care that too
much communication contact has the potential of disturbing and distracting the
employee, while too little could leave the employee without the necessary guidance to the
organization.
1.1.3 Lack of updating job descriptions
In the Trading department, in order to accomplish the assigned work, group
members must share data, information, and professional knowledge, which need to have
high team cooperation. In fact, employees tend to work only what is outlined in their job
description and little else, resulting in lack of cooperation and high workload. It can be
seen that since the number of workers decreased, the amount of workload still increased
while their job descriptions were unchanged and inflexible; therefore, employees’
refusals to carry out relevant assignment happens to be normal in this case.
To sum up, there is a need to updating job descriptions at the department to
increase flexibility in works, to enhance team cooperation, work productivity as well as
to eliminate employees’ job duty confusion.
1.1.4 Poor reward system
In fact, in the current situation of the bank, financial funds to pay rewards and
bonuses to employees are cut entirely and now money is used to focus primarily on
business activities of the bank.
It can be seen that the remaining employees have to work more than before and
there are no reward systems for them. As a result, it is necessary to have awards for
recognizing the efforts and inputs of their hardworking. However, due to inappropriate
reward system, it causes lack of team cooperation at the department.

31
1.2 Validating causes
Based on the previous analyses and in-depth interviews, many employees
emphasized the importance of having updating job descriptions for the workers because
the outdated job descriptions made them confused while doing assigned jobs that were
not shown in their job descriptions and failed to show their work abilities in right ways,
which affected to their motivation to cooperate with members from other teams. To be
specific, Ms. Thao shared that unwilling working partners and the job descriptions are not
clear affect directly her motivation to work and cooperation with other members from
different teams. Besides, Mr. Hau from FX Trading team clarified that if the job
description would not be demanding enough and he would not able to improve his skills,
he would not consider it as a challenge for him to devote his time to work at the
department. Furthermore, Ms. Thuy also said that a good communication and relationship
between employees is important due to it increases the willingness to cooperate with each
other and to stay longer at the department if employees feel like themselves and their
effort are valued. Moreover, with the pay system, all employees felt that if it is unfair, not
tied to the level of education and skills, as well as inexperienced employees get the same
pay than the ones who have been working for many years and there is a need to rewards
employees who have higher working performances, it would have a negative effect on
employees’ performances, causing conflicts in work and difficulties in cooperation.
In reality, each employee has different perspective and characteristic, and in
organizations, there is not only one employee; as a result, the cause – personality
differences are hard for top management level to find the solution to improve this issue.
Accordingly, communication is based on the working environment as well as employees’
interactions; thus, managers could control and use their leadership styles to improve that.
In fact, due to the low benefits and limited opportunities at the department, employees
want to quit their job to find other great chances and the remaining employees were
unsatisfied while implementing their jobs, which affecting the whole business
performance. Importantly, taking care of the current employees’ demands at the

32
department is a must now. Hence, it is vital for management to update job descriptions
and improve reward system immediately.
Generally, job description is defined as a written document “identifying tasks,
duties and responsibilities of job and job specifications list the knowledge, skills, abilities
and other characteristics needed to perform the job” (54). Actually, there is no standard
format for job descriptions and they are often designed depending on the organizational
structure and culture. However, the job description need to include information divided
into sections, including “identification of the position, tasks and responsibilities of the
employee, work relations, work standards (performance), work conditions, minimal
specifications and qualifications” (55). Currently, the job descriptions for each position
are outdated and inflexible for the remaining employees at the department, which causes
lack of cooperation and high workload.
In addition, rewards can be described as “an award given to an employee on their
achievement and contribution towards their companies” (56). Through reward system,
employees’ motivation is improved, encourages employees to succeed and helps the
organization to reduce the employee turnover rate. Thus, it can be said that if employees
are well-treated and enjoy their current work, the outcomes will be better. On the other
hand, if the organization does not have any plans or records to implement reward process
for great employees’ performances, it will result in the failure in inspiring employees and
retaining talented staffs, causing lack of cooperation among remaining employees.
Based on the summarized information from the interviews and the above
validations, lack of updating job descriptions and poor reward system can be identified as
main causes of cooperative problem among employees at the department.
In short, according to all previous analysis, the final cause-effect map will be shown
as below:

33
Main Causes
Symptoms
Lack of
updating job
descriptions Validated Problem
Poor team
Poor reward
cooperation
Consequences
system
• Task outcomes
• Psychosocial
outcomes
Diagram 3: Final cause-effect map of Foreign Trading Department
2 Alternative solutions
After having analyzed the main causes of the current problem “Poor team
cooperation at Trading Department”, it is clear that the department needs to propose the
best solutions for improvement and take appropriate actions to tackle this problem.
In fact, Mr. Dat – Director of the department shared that in order to make the better
working environment to increase sales profit as well as decrease employees’ turnover
intention, there is no doubt that all employees should take considerations to find solutions
and implement for improving cooperation between teams immediately. However, due to
the current limited financial situation of the bank, it is vital to identify the most
appropriate methods and consider all expenses carefully to be able to effectively meet the
actual needs of the department.
Generally, with the aim to solve the main two factors causing the poor team
cooperation, it is important for employees to believe they involve in a fair structure, to
have better understanding and full confidence in their jobs if managers want to install a
new reward structure or to revise an existing one. In addition, according to Wilson B
(57), rewards structures are recognized as “fairly differentiating between the different
levels of individual contribution”; especially, in terms of involvement, the ideal

34
opportunities when developing a rewards structure are found in the writing of job
descriptions and in the job evaluation process. Therefore, it needs to have the
development of job description before the managers want to develop any pay structure.
2.1 Solution 1: Mangers share current job descriptions with employees, require
their input to incorporate into managers’ ideas about how to describe the position
appropriately and then get reviews by Human Resources
According to Oswald FL (58), a job description can be defined as a “brief written
description of work”, which is used to provide an overview of the job to those who are
not familiar with it. Additionally, Arthur D (59) also demonstrated that the job
description outlines the essential duties and responsibilities of the work the employees are
expected to perform; especially, it defines accountability in a firm that helps to prevent
overlap of duties and task responsibilities among employees. Actually, it is important for
each organization to have the job description that is not only descriptive but also clear to
understand. Gan M and Kleiner BH (60) believe that job descriptions will increase the
good feeling of employees and give opportunities for the team to work together faster and
more effectively.
On the other hand, many organizations seem to ignore the importance of updating
and writing new job descriptions. It can be seen that each companies have their job
descriptions as basic building blocks for human resource functions, including
recruitment, hiring, performance evaluations and rewards; however, they tend to forget to
update job descriptions regularly and appropriately. Noticeably, whenever the
organization’s purpose, mission or structure changes, the departments, teams as well as
the business operations also change. Therefore, to accommodate the changes in
organizations, the job functions of employees also change and employees may assume
new responsibilities or leave out tasks that were not working well.
Obviously, if there is one staff doing the work of many, or there are employees
who are unable or unwilling to do what others asked them to do, there needs to have
detail discussion about each job description, function and how those fit in with the
business goals (61). Besides, due to many activities in the workplace are based on job

35
descriptions, it is impossible to manage work performances effectively by continually
using the outdated job descriptions. Hence, it is crucial for the managers to make a
review of the job description with employees on a regular basis in order to ensure that it
still reflects the work that employees are doing and then update job descriptions to keep
them relevant with the real job functions of employees; as a result, difficulties can be
avoided in the future.
In the case of DAB’s Trading department, due to poor team cooperation and
shortage of staffs, most of employees felt dissatisfied when having work overload and
doing more tasks that were not their duties as well as being confused in practices with
outdated job descriptions. Accordingly, Mr. Dat and Mrs. Thuy – directors of the
department stated, because they realized that some old employees seem not to put their
efforts or participate actively anymore in the whole business development, new
employees also feel distracted, and especially, there is a decrease in cooperation between
employees, it is necessary to improve job descriptions immediately to make sure each
employee clear on which goal or objective needs to be reached and to understand not
only his or her role but also the roles of the co-workers around them in order to feel more
comfortable collaborating together. Importantly, they also suggested having a specific
team to support revising and improving current job descriptions or hiring outside
supervisors who are specialized in this field at least three years to cooperate with the
team if needed to analyze and understand the main causes clearly and push up the
process; however, it is crucial to consider the budget carefully and logically and the
estimated maximum value that can be used in this process is limited to approximately 100
million Vietnam dong.
Recognizing that many issues existed with the non-updated job description at the
department, there are some solutions that managers consider as followings:
 First, share current job descriptions with employees in the roles and talk with
them about their work, requiring their input to incorporate into managers’ ideas
about how to describe the position appropriately and then get reviews by
Human Resources.

36
 Second, hire outside human resource expert to support the updating job
descriptions’ process; then, ask employees to develop their own position
descriptions, telling them to work off the job descriptions based on the current
ones; accordingly, they will add clarifying descriptions to the employment,
classification and compensation job descriptions.

 Third, hire outside human resource expert to support the updating job
descriptions’ process; draft the new position descriptions for employees’ jobs
and then discuss the drafts with them to ensure they understand your
expectations and standards for the position; and get reviews by Human
Resources at last.
Accordingly, some benefits and costs could be described as below:
 Benefits:

Improving morale of employees.



Enhancing communication between employer and employee.



Being able to measure future performance.



Setting the stage for the fair and legal discipline or terminating the
employees that are unable to meet expectations.


Enhancing the ability to retain stellar employees.



Assisting in planning for the future.


 Costs: The estimated costs for each outlined solutions above are indicated in
details as followings:
Unit: Vietnam dong (VND)
No. Types of costs
Estimated costs
First solution Second solution Third solution
1 Allowances for employees involved 20.000.000 20.000.000 20.000.000
2 Cost of facilities 1.500.000 1.500.000 1.500.000
3 Cost of stationary 1.000.000 1.000.000 2.000.000
4 Expert cost (1 person) 0 25.000.000 25.000.000
5 Training costs 10.000.000 10.000.000 40.000.000

37
No. Types of costs
Estimated costs
First solution Second solution Third solution
6 Operating costs 15.000.000 15.000.000 20.000.000
7 Evaluation cost 10.000.000 10.000.000 10.000.000
8 Other costs 5.000.000 5.000.000 5.000.000
Total expenses 62.500.000 87.500.000 123.500.000
Table 6: Estimated costs for updating job description at Trading department
After analyzing and comparing the benefits and estimated costs among potential
solutions above, it can be seen that the first solution focusing on improving and updating
current job descriptions costs the least to implement, at 62.5 million VND while the third
one applying brand new job descriptions costs the most, at 123.5 million VND. In fact,
depending on the limited cost approved by top managers, the first and the second solution
could be taken into considerations. To be specific, the second solution includes hiring
outside experts which could costs the department a long and expensive process more than
the first one, due to the fact that the bank needs to spend external costs or a huge amount
of money to hire experts, and it can take much time for new supervisors to come up to
speed on the process, to become familiar with the business, managers and current
employees and importantly, to understand clearly about the existing problem of the
department which needs to be solved immediately. Thus, the second solution cannot be
an appropriate choice for implementation. Alternatively, based on Herbert G et al. (62)’s
study and depending on the current department’s situation, the first solution proved to be
the best one. It can be said that each person in organizations has a role and often with
overlapping responsibilities (61). Additionally, creating or updating job descriptions
should involve employees, managers and human resources. Clearly, as Mr. Dat, Mrs.
Thuy and Ms. Tam – as a role of main decision-maker and leader of the business at the
department – also shared that employees are the persons who implement daily work will
have the best idea of the scope and the size of the jobs; as a result, they will know what
they actually do and do not in their work as well as which should input into their
descriptions based on the current job descriptions. Furthermore, managers are the person

38
in charge of keeping descriptions up-to-date and also must be a part of the updating
process to ensure the responsibilities and requirements are appropriate with actual
activities at the department, based on the review of Human Resources. Finally, Human
Resources’ responsibility is “to coach and facilitate the process of updating, as well as to
revise job description in accordance with the organization’s legal obligations” (61). Thus,
in view of the importance of having updating job description and using the first solution,
the Trading department could have an opportunity to understand more about the existence
of job descriptions and be able to take proactive steps with minimum costs and time
towards addressing the inefficiencies in updating instead of hiring supervisors to support
or focusing on writing new job descriptions.
2.2 Solution 2: Revising current KPIs through updated job descriptions and
applying KPI-based reward system
From above analyses, it can be remarked that the department has suffered the
consequences of low profits and high employee turnover due to the current poor reward
systems – one of the major causes in the working area. According to Korir I and
Kepkebut D (63), organizations have poor or no reward management structure resulting
in decreasing organizational performance, discouraging employees’ commitments,
motivations and innovations to cooperate with the others to accomplish the common
objectives. Notably, for organizational employees, an equitable rewards distribution
system signals management’s emphasis on employee valuation (64). Moreover, Howard
LW and Dougherty TW (65) remarks that “performance appraisal systems are more
effective when there is a connection between the results of the performance management
system and the reward system of the organization”.
In Armstrong M and Murlis H (66)’s studies, reward systems are divided into
financial and non-financial rewards. Specifically, financial rewards are pay, benefits,
promotions, salary increases and bonuses; on the contrary, non-financial rewards consist
of growth opportunities, accomplishment, acknowledgement, satisfaction, self-esteem,
challenge, autonomy and responsibility. It can be said that reward systems refer to all the
employers’ possible tools that used to “attract, retain, motivate and satisfy employees” in

39
the working environment (67). Regarding to Ejumudo KBO (68), reward systems are “at
the heart of employee performance” and play vital roles in promoting higher levels of
employees’ performance including quantity of output, quality of output, timeliness of
output, presence at work and cooperativeness in the banks through the achievement of the
commol goals. In fact, most of modern businesses are no longer paying their qualification
and seniority pay; on the other hand, they have begun to pay salaries according to
employees’ capacities and performances instead. Actually, it seems to be reasonable due
to if employees do not have the capacity or work ineffective, the business will be
inefficient and unprofitable to be able to afford high salaries and to reward more for
employees. Therefore, it is essential to have reward systems based on a deeper
understanding of the employees’ activities across all elements in employment
relationships with the right evaluation methods (68). In addition, Mr. Dat and Mrs. Thuy
– based on their own working experiences – shared that due to each organization’s
culture is different, not only the organization need to pay more attention to have an
effective approach that would suit their companies best, but also employers need to
understand what their employees really want in terms of rewards in order to attract and
retain younger generation as well as keep older employees happy and engaged (69). As a
result, the managers should reward people fairly, equitably and consistently as well as
well-rewarded employees could feel valued by their organizations and will be willing to
cooperate and put their efforts on whole business development.
Based on the interviews with current employees at the department, most
employees mentioned that it will be better if their managers use financial rewards instead
of non-financial ones due to these rewards are tied directly to their performance and
could impact positively on their working efforts. Moreover, in term of managers’
perspectives, Mr. Dat and Mrs. Thuy also agreed with those recommendations; however,
with the limited budget of about 200 to 250 million VND for this solution, they want to
reward employees accurately based on the KPI evaluation system through updating job
descriptions. Clearly, if there is no clear criterion and good evaluation, it is impossible to
explain to the supervisor why the employee is good and whose team at the department

40
did not accomplish the goal. Due to the current KPI system is only used once a year at the
end of the year, it is difficult for managers to monitor regularly the advantages and
disadvantages of employees’ work to be able to evaluate them correctly. In addition, the
current KPI is out-dated, depends on the old job descriptions and insufficient with the
current situation of the department (including number of existing employees, workload
and working time). Therefore, it is necessary to develop criteria for completion of work
(KPIs) as a basis for evaluation and the department can attain some key benefits as
following:

Allowing employers/employees to clarify what needs to be done to improve
their department;



Finding problems earlier;



Employers could manage work more objectively and keep employees focus
on doing the right things;



Employees’ efforts will be recognised and their achievements will be
rewarded;



Employees will have more self-confidence and enjoy their job more;



Increasing career opportunities.

Recognizing the KPI system’s issues existed at the department and based on the
current KPI using for many years, there is an update KPI that managers could consider as
below:
Part I - Evaluating the accomplishment of objectives, professional criteria (80
points)
The staff discusses and agrees with direct management of goals and targets and
must understand the rating scale for the completion of each objective at the beginning of
the review period.
Target / Indicator Current Revised
proportion proportion
1. Achieve the profit target assigned 25 30
2. Ensure sufficient supply of foreign currencies for
20 30
overseas remittance

41
Target / Indicator Current Revised
proportion proportion
3. Ability to train and guide sub units to comply with DAB’s
regulations and procedures on the basis of complying with 20 10
regulations of the SBV.
4. Ability to manage provincial business staffs, satisfaction
15 10
rate
Total score 80 80
Part II – Evaluating the completion of other indicators (20 points)
A detailed description of the rating scale for mandatory criteria is attached
Benchmark Current points Revised points
Compliance 5 3
Support, cooperation 5 8
Creation 7 3
Collective spirit 3 6
Total score 20 20
Accordingly, to evaluate the current employees at the department, the KPI system
above consists of two parts of the rating scale. It can be seen that part one accounts for 80
out of 100 points, including 4 main targets with almost equal score, about 20 points; and
part two accounts for the remaining 20 points with the creation taking the highest score in
the total of 4 indicators, at 7 points. Based on the current situation and HR issue at the
department, it is urgent to revise and adjust the KPI system to employees appropriately.
Specifically, to enhance employees’ performance and to boost the profit growth, the
managers could consider improving the points of the target “Achieve the profit target
assigned” and “Ensure sufficient supply of foreign currencies for overseas remittance”
higher than the current ones, each at 30 out of 80 points. Moreover, due to poor team
cooperation is the main problem of the department at this point of time, the managers also
should reconsider to improve the target “Support, cooperation” having the highest point
in part two to keep the employees focus on and know what is the most important things to
do at this period. Subsequently, regarding to the updated KPI system, managers could
apply KPI-based reward systems for all employees easier and more correctly.
Specifically, in addition to the fixed salaries employees receive monthly, they will

42
receive extra salaries corresponding to the scores they earned when completing the KPI
indicators and the summary of the reward system will take place quarterly instead of once
at the end of the year. For instance, if employees have the total KPI scores less than 60,
they will not be rewarded; hence, if the total KPI scores are above 60, employees will
receive additional salaries corresponding to the scores (Appendix 4).
In short, by revising and updating the KPI system through updated job
descriptions, it could be easier for managers to reward employees fairly, equitably and
consistently.
3 Action plan
Based on literature reviews, actual findings and the two solutions presented above,
the Trading department needs to take actions with three steps as following:
Step1: Revising and updating current job descriptions;
Step 2: Discussing and revising KPI evaluation through updated job descriptions;
Step 3: Applying KPI-based reward system.
Moreover, depending on the instruction of the Trading department’s managers,
they suggested that prior to starting an action plan, the bank needs to create a team to
follow up the project in order to validate and evaluate the issues effectively and
efficiently. Importantly, due to current employees are the people who know better than
anyone the nuances involved in the existing processes at DAB and the limited budgets are
allowed, the project team will consist of total six people currently working at DAB
including 1 HR manager, 1 Trading department’s manager, 2 HR employees and 2
Trading department’s employees. Therefore, in addition to their actual wages, they will
receive an extra wage while implementing the project as detailed below:
 A – HR manager: 45,000 VND/hour

 B – Trading department’s manager: 45,000 VND/hour

 C, D – HR employees: 25,000 VND/hour

 E, F – Trading department’s employees: 25,000 VND/hour.
Clearly, an HR head is responsible for organizing all functions of the organization.
Especially, when drafting new company policies or writing terms of a contract or job

43
design, it is the HR department’s job to build guidelines to ensure organizations’
continual growth and existence as well as to get employees in tune with the working of
the organization. In addition, the HR should always make sure to keep the organization’s
practices in compliance with the labor laws, tax laws, permissible working hours,
minimum wages, and a no-discrimination policy. However, in this action plan, it will be
better for HR department if they cooperate with Trading department to apply solutions to
solve the main problem. Actually, it could be a win-win because to solve the problem, it
is important for HR to have a detailed understanding of existing jobs and what Trading
department is trying to improve quality or efficiency and Trading department also wants
to tackle this problem as soon as possible to operate more effectively; thus, with the
cooperation between HR and Trading department, the problem could be solved sooner
and employees could be less fatigued, resulting in having more opportunities for
development.
Consequently, a detail action plan which takes approximately six months (181
days) from 03 December 2018 to 12 August 2019 will be scheduled as table below.
3.1 Task handling
Step 1: Revising and updating current job descriptions (Duration: 39 days)
No. Task Start Finish Durations Prede Responsible Salary
-cessors persons
1 Receiving job Mon Wed 3 days A 1,080,000
description 03/12/2018 05/12/2018
amendment request
and give the
Trading
department
approval
2 Gathering Mon Tue 7 days 1 C,E 2,240,000
information related 10/12/2018 18/12/2018
to the jobs from
current employees
to identify the need
for an updated job
descriptions
3 Holding a meeting Wed Wed 1 day 2 B 360,000
to discuss with all 19/12/2018 19/12/2018

44
-cessors persons
employees what
needs to amend
based on current
job descriptions
4 Validating the job Thu Wed 15 days 3 A,B 10,800,000
description draft 20/12/2018 09/01/2019
with employees,
adding appropriate
changes and
reviewing job
description draft"
5 Discussing and Thu Wed 10 days 4 B,E,F,D 8,400,000
developing the 10/01/2019 23/01/2019
updated job
description based
on the guidance
and approval of
HR and managers
6 Signing job Thu Thu 1 day 5 A,B 720,000
descriptions by the 24/01/2019 24/01/2019
Trading
department’s
managers and HR
manager then
making initial
approval by the
concerned assistant
undersecretary
Total 23,600,000
Table 7: Estimated labor cost in Action plan step 1
Step 2: Discussing and revising KPI evaluation through updated job descriptions
(Duration: 62 days)
-cessors persons
7 Attaching the goal Fri Thu 5 days 6 A,B 3,600,000
of job position to 25/01/2019 31/01/2019
a common goal
8 Reviewing and Fri Mon 7 days 7 C,E,D,F 4,480,000
gathering 01/02/2019 11/02/2019
information about
the needs of
revising current

45
-cessors persons
KPIs
9 Defining and Tue Mon 10 days 8 A,B 7,200,000
setting targets for 12/02/2019 25/02/2019
each KPIs based
on the current
business
objectives and
updated job
descriptions
10 Collecting data Tue Mon 15 days 9 C 2,400,000
and develop KPI 26/02/2019 18/03/2019
11 Coach managers Tue Mon 10 days 10 D 1,600,000
and users 19/03/2019 01/04/2019
12 Monitoring, Tue Mon 15 days 11 A,B 10,800,000
revising and 02/04/2019 22/04/2019
evaluating
employees
quarterly based on
updated KPI"
Total 30,080,000
Step 3: Applying KPI-based reward system (Duration: 80 days)
-cessors persons
13 1-month trial Tue Mon 30 days 12 E,F 9,600,000
process with KPI- 23/04/2019 03/06/2019
based reward
system
14 Monitoring and Tue Mon 10 days 13 A,B 7,200,000
evaluating the 04/06/2019 17/06/2019
updated KPI
system
15 Feedback period Tue Mon 10 days 14 D,F 3,200,000
18/06/2019 01/07/2019
16 Implementation Tue Mon 30 days 15 B,E,F,C 25,200,000
and Re-evaluation 02/07/2019 12/08/2019
Total 45,200,000
In this project, the cost can be estimated just including salary (fixed) and other
expenses. It can be seen that after estimating the labor cost in three steps, the total labor

46
cost to implement the plan estimate about 98,880,000 VND. Then, the total budget for the
project will be represented as followings:
No. Item Budget
1 Labor cost 98,880,000
2 Cost of facilities 7,000,000
3 Cost of stationary 5,000,000
4 Internet, electric cost 10,000,000
5 Training costs 40,000,000
6 Operating cost 50,000,000
7 Evaluation cost 50,000,000
8 Other costs 35,000,000
Total budget 295,880,000
Table 10: Estimated total budget for action plan
As a result, after having estimation and making timeline for the action plan, it can
be seen that the estimated total budget still meets the budget requirements of top
managements (300 million VND in total). However, it is important for all employees to
pay attention and to make sure all resources, time and cost have to be used efficiently and
on time to get the best productivity.

47
3.2 Gantt chart
Following the whole information of the above action plan, the department could output Gantt Chart in order to have
the summary to control the timeline and budget as well as manage the risk.

48
Figure 6: Working days
Figure 7: Project summary
3.3 Effectiveness measurement through taking actions
Due to the urgent to solve the main problem effectively and efficiently, with the
high expectations of the positive effects when implementing the above actions, Board
of Director, Trading department and Human resources department want to see a
positive improve in the trading profits growth as well as a significant reduction in the
employees’ turnover rate at the end of the year 2019.
According to the top managements’ belief, they expect that the trading profits
could increase by 25% compared to that ones at the end of 2017 and the total number

49
of employees working at the department will reach 25 persons as planned,
approximately increase by 30% compared to 2017. Furthermore, they also hope that
with the proposed action plan above, the business operations will run on time,
smoothly and effectively.
4 Conclusion
In organizations, cooperation is one of the most vital aspects in creating healthy
workplaces in which all employees will be more productive and work together to
achieve both personal and companies’ objectives. It can be seen that this thesis aims to
identify and investigate the main problem affecting negatively to the trading profits as
well as employees’ turnover rate at DongA Bank’s Trading department during this
period. Hence, based on the internal in-depth interviews and literature reviews, as well
as by finding the main causes “Lack of updating job descriptions” and “Poor reward
system”, the thesis indicates that poor team cooperation at the department is
considered as the main problem that needs to have some potential solutions to tackle it
immediately and effectively for better business improvement.
Accordingly, with the appropriate budget allowed, the 6-month proposed action
plan for improving the poor team cooperation at the department is presented with three
specific steps including step (1) revising and updating current job descriptions; step (2)
discussing and revising KPI evaluation through updated job descriptions; and finally,
step (3) applying KPI-based reward system. Clearly, to achieve the best final results,
all managers and employees need to cooperate to implement the plan on time,
effectively and consistently. In brief, it is necessary for managers to have more
discussion with employees and to have evaluations quarterly to be able to quickly spot
errors or problems and then find solutions to fix them right away.

50
CHAPTER 3: SUPPORTING INFORMATION

Luận Văn Poor Team Cooperation At Donga Bank’s Trading Department.doc

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