Relationship Between Training and Employee Productivity in Organization: A Partial Least Square (PLS-SEM) Approach

Abstract

Many manufacturing organizations focus only on technical enhancement of machines and adopting latest technical knowhow and superior raw material to produce goods and offer improvements, ignoring the need of providing training, particularly to their technical staff involved in production process in order to improve their productivity. This study attempts to find a relationship between training and employee productivity. A mixed methods approach, both qualitative and quantitative, was used to carry out this study. A questionnaire consisting of 30 statements on the impact of general training on employee productivity was given to respondents. The data was analyzed with Smart PLS software. Taking a step further, a few statements were also added in the questionnaire about strategic skills in order to add value to this study.  The gap analysis method was adopted to identify the questionnaire items and was validated for its content by experts. Complementary to the questionnaires, on‐site visits were made to collect data thorough interviews, documentation and observations. The study shows that both general skills and strategic skills have a positive relationship with employee productivity. The practical implication would be in the form of guidelines for training experts and HR mangers ensuring a mix of general and specific (strategic) training to impact the productivity. The limitations of this research were cost, time and lack of training and learning environment in the sampled organization. This study is a contribution to the domain of training which strives to find its positive relationship with employee productivity.

Keywords : strategic training, input and output, learning environment