---------------------------♦----------------------------- INTRODUCTION

The Parliament of India passed the Life Insurance Corporation Act on the 19th of June 1956, and the Life Insurance Corporation of India was created on 1st September, 1956, with the objective of spreading life insurance much more widely and in particular to the rural areas with a view to reach all insurable persons in the country, providing them adequate financial cover at a reasonable cost. LIC had 5 zonal offices, 33 divisional offices and 212 branch offices, apart from its corporate office in the year 1956. Since life insurance contracts are long term contracts and during the currency of the policy it requires a variety of services need was felt in the later years to expand the operations and place a branch office at each district headquarter. Re-organization of LIC took place and large numbers of new branch offices were opened. As a result of re-organization servicing functions were transferred to the branches, and branches were made accounting units. It worked wonders with the performance of the corporation. It may be seen that from about 200.00 crores of New Business in 1957 the corporation crossed 1000.00 crores only in the year 1969-70, and it took another 10 years for LIC to cross 2000.00 crore mark of new business. But with re-organization happening in the early eighties, by 1985-86 LIC had already crossed 7000.00 crore Sum Assured on new policies. Today LIC function with 2048 fully computerized branch offices, 100 divisional offices, 7 zonal offices and the corporate office. LIC’s Wide Area Network covers 100 divisional offices and connects all the branches through a Metro Area Network. LIC has tied up with some Banks and Service providers to offer online premium collection facility in selected cities. LIC’s ECS and ATM premium payment facility is an addition to customer convenience. Apart from on-line Kiosks and IVRS, Info Centres have been commissioned at Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, New Delhi, Pune and many other cities. With a vision of providing easy access to its policyholders, LIC has lunched its SATELLITE SAMPARK offices. The satellite offices are smaller, leaner and closer to the customer. The digitalized records of the satellite offices will facilitate anywhere servicing and many other conveniences in the future. LIC continues to be the dominant life insurer even in the liberalized scenario of Indian insurance and is moving fast on a new growth trajectory surpassing its own past records. LIC has issued over one crore policies during the current year. It has crossed the milestone of issuing 1,01,32,955 new policies by 15th Oct, 2005, posting a healthy growth rate of 16.67% over the corresponding period of the previous. year. From then to now, LIC has crossed many milestones and has set unprecedented performance records in various aspects of life insurance business. The same motives which inspired our forefathers to bring insurance into existence in this country inspire us at LIC to take this message of protection to light the lamps of security in as many homes as possible and to help the people in providing security to their families. Some of the important milestones in the life insurance business in India are : 1818 : Oriental Life Insurance Company, the first life insurance company on Indian soil started functioning. 1870: Bombay Mutual Life Assurance Society, the first Indian life insurance company started its business. 1912: The Indian Life Assurance Companies Act enacted as the first statute to regulate the life insurance business. 1928: The Indian Insurance Companies Act enacted to enable the government to collect statistical information about both life and non-life insurance businesses. 1938: Earlier legislation consolidated and amended to by the Insurance Act with the objective of protecting the interests of the insuring public. 1956: 245 Indian and foreign insurers and provident societies are taken over by the central government

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MISSION: “Explore and enhance the quality of life of people through financial security by providing products and services of aspired attributes with competitive returns, and by rendering resources for economic development”. VISION: “A trans-nationally competitive financial conglomerate of significance to societies and Pride of India”.

LIC will be: 1. The dominant financial conglomerate of India with widespread global footprint. 2. An innovative company both in terms of product and marketing. 3. A global benchmark for customer satisfaction An employer of choice known for its vibrant and multi skilled workforce. A role model for corporate governance and social responsibility.

The Notion behind carrying out this study focused on having an in-dept analysis of the prevailing training and development programmes at LIC with the help of a survey of the HR practices. Training refers to the method used to give new or present employees the skills they need to perform their job. Training is the process of increasing the knowledge and skills for doing a particular job. It is an organized procedure by which people learn knowledge and development is a long term educational process utilizing a systematic and organized procedure by which managerial personnel learn conceptual and theoretical knowledge.

_ To understand attitude of employees towards training programmes. _ To know the effect of training on the employees performance _ To understand the attitude of top level management towards implementation of training programme. _ To know about the effectiveness of training policy towards the achievement of organization’s objectives and vision.

1) Training must contribute in keeping people abreast of latest information, technical knowledge in specialized areas and develop their personality to suit the position/designation that they are occupying. improvements in processes involved. 3) Training must help to acquire required supervisory and management skills in keeping with the position and improve decision making and problem solving skills. Better engagement and productivity must be quantified from time to time. 4) Training must focus on assisting an individual in managing change. 5) The higher levels of Training Institutes should be engaged in market research which will contribute in maintaining our leadership position, through better and cheaper products, better CRM skills and leading edge in information technology.

1) The Training policy is formulated at the Central Office and the Central Office reserves the right to make any modifications required. However the implementation of the training policy will come under the purview of Principals of Zonal Training Centres in each zone. 2) Training modules must be designed differently so as to suit the specific needs of a target group-e.g. Functional Topics must concentrate on theoretical aspects and case studies. 3) Ideally training sessions for management cadre should be conducted at MDC, so that along with functional and theoretical inputs, some managerial leadership and decision making are also included. 4) Training inputs for clerical staff and officers up to A.O can be conducted at the Zonal Training Centers, Divisional and Employees Training Centers. Here the emphasis would be on subject specific. Knowledge, use of relevant FEAP modules etc. 5) Whenever an employees is posted to a new department he must undergo a technical training session to give him required inputs. 6) That apart each employee must attend at least one training session each year to update his knowledge.

Training refers to the method used to give new or present employees the skills they need to perform their job and development is a long term educational process utilizing a systematic and organized procedure by which managerial personnel learn conceptual and theoretical knowledge.

taking an integrated, goal oriented approach to assigning, training, assessing and rewarding employees performance. Training is a process of learning a sequence of programme of behavior. It is application of knowledge. It attempts to improve their performance on the current job or prepare them for an intended job. Training programme available now for developing a variety of skills starting from memory improvements, leadership, motivation, team building, rational decisions making human resources development, computer programming corporate planning to entrepreneurship development. Training can be made very useful for organization if the training function is managed well.

Training is the corner stone of sound management for its makes employees more effective and productive. It is actively and intimately connected with all the personnel or managerial activities. It is an integral part of the whole management programme, with all its many activities functionally interrelated. There is a need for training men so that new changed techniques may be taken advantaged of and improvement affected in the old method, which are more fully inefficient.

1. To increase productivity 2. To improve quality 3. To help a company fulfill its future personnel need 4. To improve organizational climate 5. Personnel growth

_ Identifying training needs _ Instructional design _ Validation step _ Implementation _ Evaluation

It is of following types: 1) On the job training: Training a person to learn a job while working on it. 2) Off the job training: It is of following types b) Case study – a development method in which the manager is presented with a written description of an organizational problem to diagnose an solve. c) Conferences d) Role playing – a development technique in which teams of managers compete by making computerized decisions regarding realistic but stimulated situation. e) Management games – a development technique in which teams of managers compete by making computerized decisions regarding realistic but stimulated situation. 3) Apprenticeship Training- A structured process by which people become skilled workers through a combination of classrooms instruction and on the job training. 4) Job instruction training – Listing each job basic tasks, along with key points, in order to provide step-by-step training for employees.

Research methodology is a way to the systematic solution of a research problem. It focuses on the various steps adopted in studying the research problem along with the logic behind using them.

The training and development programmes adopted by LIC helping improving employee’s performance and simultaneously fulfill organization objectives.

The highly effective research methodology used can both be Quantitative and Qualitative in employee research. It is necessary to ensure that correct methodology is used for the type of research to be conducted.

All the items under consideration in any field of enquiry constitute a ‘universe’. In our case it is the employees of LIC

A sample design is a definite plan determined before any data are actually collected for obtaining a sample from a given population. In this case I have used convenient sampling.

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* Primary methods Observational methods : observation is a way to look at the things, as they exist. It involves the use of various senses and drawing meanings to the things we see or hear. There are a number of things that can be observed by an evaluation. These may be classified under the following categories: _ Physical facilities and living conditions _ Meetings, discussion and other transactions _ Celebrations and other events related to organization life and culture _ Training and other HR related facilities _ Forms and formats, reports, manuals etc.

Interview methods is quick and adequate for comprehensive HR audit. Interviewing the various stakeholders can give considerable data about the current areas and directions for the improvements. The main advantage of the interviews is its capacity to capture the primary concern of the people under study. Interview makes the assessment dynamic. In interviewed people in office and thus collected relevant information. The critical scientific study lies in framing the questions rather than in finding the answers. Thus to reach the correct perspective, it is imperative to go through the right way. The purpose of preparing a questionnaire was to collect concrete information which may give the best possible results to fulfill my objective of the report.

Analysis of secondary data can give a lot of insight into HR assets and liabilities of the company published literature of the company such as annual report, marked handouts issued also helped in assessing the strengths and weakness.

1. Many of the employees were reluctant to fill the questionnaire. 2. The sample size of the report is not very large because of the time, cost and accessibility constraint. 3. Faced a bit of difficulty in getting access to the employees. 4. Time constraint, as limited period of time was provided for the survey.

_ Wide Geographical Spread _ Large Distribution Network _ Strong IT Infrastructure _ Large Volume _ Brand Image _ Employee Strength

_ Difficulty in changing perceptions _ Slowing Growth Rate

_ Expanding Market _ Leverage embedded strengths

_ 21 competitors with world class expertise _ Innovative products offered by competitors

1. There should be more participation from the top level management in implementation of training and development programmes. 2. Awareness and importance of training programmes should be increased. 3. Training and development programmes should be compatible with private sector programmes. 4. Employees engagement to be strengthened in respect of training and development programmes. 5. Matching the right competencies and skills with right job.

The result derived from this survey proved that the hypothesis taken up for conducting the research was true and training and development programmes adopted by LIC help in improving employee’s performance and simultaneously fulfill organizational objectives. Today the insurance industry is on boom. Many new companies are entering in insurance sector. Through foreign direct investment also foreign companies are entering so in this cut throat competition various steps are to be taken by LIC in

programmes help to develop skills in employees which help them to work in the changing scenario. Its task is to attain objective in relation to employees and organization and society with the resources available within the organization. Competitiveness demands diverse workforce and upto-date skills.