Multiple effects of human resource development interventions
The Authors
Jens Rowold, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to explore the simultaneous impact of employees' participation in non-technical training, technical training, and coaching on subsequent job performance, job involvement, and job satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach – The present study was based on a sample of German call center employees and on a longitudinal, multiple-sources-of-data research design.
Findings – It was found that non-technical training impacted subsequent soft skills and that technical training predicted subsequent hard skills as well as job involvement. Moreover, employees' participation in coaching predicted job satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications – The present study was the first to demonstrate positive effects of technical training on job involvement, and of coaching on job satisfaction. In sum, validity of several developmental interventions was highlighted.
Practical implications – Organizations designing and implementing various developmental interventions should pay attention to the relative effectiveness of these interventions on various organizational-relevant outcome criteria.
Originality/value – For the first time, the simultaneous impact of multiple human resource development interventions on several outcome criteria was tested empirically.
Article Type:
Research paper
Keyword(s):
Technical training; Coaching; Job satisfaction; Employee involvement; Performance management; Human resource development.
Journal:
Journal of European Industrial Training
Volume:
32
Number:
1
Year:
2008
pp:
32-44
Copyright ©
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN:
0309-0590
The rapidly accelerating rate of technological innovation forces organizations to invest in employees' training and development interventions. Consequently, human resource development interventions (DI) such as non-technical training, technical training, and coaching are designed to prepare the workforce for the future and for updating employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA; Birdi, 2005; Brooks and Nafukho, 2006). From an organizational, strategic perspective, DI have explicit as well as implicit goals (Ordóñez de Pablos, 2004). Most DI are designed to accomplish clearly defined, explicit organizational goals (Hesketh and Ivancic, 2002; Salas and Cannon-Bowers, 2001). For example, a one-and-half day leadership training that taught communication of a vision as part of charismatic leadership was designed and implemented; consequent evaluation demonstrated that this training increased leaders' charismatic leadership (Frese et al., 2003).
In addition to these explicit goals, most DI have implicit goals as well. For example, organizational socialization theory suggests that training also leads to more positive work-related attitudes such as job involvement and job satisfaction (Feldman, 1989). In addition, in their model of training effectiveness, Kraiger et al. (1993) discuss cognitive, behavioral, and affective outcome criteria of training. While cognitive and behavioral outcomes are mostly explicit goals of DI, most affective outcomes are implicit. Thus, organizations aim at enhancing employees' job involvement and job satisfaction by designing DI (Neumann et al., 1989). In turn, these attitudes foster positive organizational outcomes such as work attendance and intention to remain in the organization (Brown, 1996). While we know a great deal about the effects of DI on explicit organizational goals such as performance, their effect on implicit goals such as job involvement and job satisfaction is not well understood. Thus, the present study was designed to test the effects of DI on both explicit (i.e. job performance) and implicit (i.e. job involvement and job satisfaction) organizational goals.
Due to short product cycles, fast technological development, and high market dynamics, DI have to be designed and implemented in ever shorter periods of time. Multiple interventions are used simultaneously to enhance employees' job performance and job attitudes. Empirical evaluation studies focusing on one isolated DI, though representing virtually all empirical studies published so far, do not adequately represent the complexity of the simultaneous implementation of different DI within today's dynamic human resource management. Consequently, this paper explores the effect of several simultaneously implemented DI on explicit and implicit goals.
First, three typical DI (i.e. non-technical training, technical training, and coaching) are briefly described. Next, three important outcome criteria (job performance, job involvement, and job satisfaction) of DI are discussed with regards to their relevance to organizational goals. The empirical part of this paper tests the competing (simultaneous) influence of three kinds of DI on three outcome criteria in a call center context and thus closes several gaps in the literature.
Training and coaching
Among the most common DI are training and coaching. In the following paragraphs, these DI as well as their effects are discussed.
Training
Within organizations, training is often utilized for enhancing employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA). Meta-analysis provides evidence that training interventions enhance performance (Arthur et al., 2003). Also, it has been shown that team building training was effective for enhancing employees' job satisfaction (Neumann et al., 1989). In this empirical study, the training was specifically designed to accomplish an explicit goal: enhanced job satisfaction. In sum, we have detailed understanding about the impact of training on explicit organizational goals. But what if job satisfaction and job involvement are not explicit, but implicit organizational goals? It might be argued that all organizations rely on highly satisfied and involved employees. With regard to job satisfaction, an empirical study conducted by Saks (1995) has found that participating in training enhanced employees' job satisfaction. This results was replicated in a study based on data from the German Socio-economic Panel (Georgellis and Lange, 2007). In contrast, a study conducted in the Australian franchise sector (Choo and Bowley, 2007) failed to replicate these results. Thus, given the equivocal empirical results, additional research seems necessary to explore the impact of training on job satisfaction.
With regard to job involvement, it could be hypothesized that training leads to higher levels of job involvement. Based on a sample of registered nurses in public hospitals, Bartlett (2001) has found support for the notion that employees' subjective access to participation in training was positively related to their job involvement. However, in another empirical study, it has been found that participation in training was positively related to job satisfaction, but not to job involvement (Osca et al., 2005). Thus, further research seems necessary to understand the effect of training on job involvement.
Within the present study, the focus is on formal training programs (cf. Method section). Moreover, a distinction is made between technical training and non-technical training. This distinction is consistent with previous literature (Kozlowski and Hults, 1987; Twitchel et al., 2000). We define technical training as all training interventions that aim at enhancing employees' technical KSA. As the present study was conducted in call centers, examples for technical KSA are knowledge about products, basic computer skills, and knowledge about the call centers' internal customer handling strategy. In contrast, non-technical training teaches employees KSA such as communication skills, customer oriented behaviors, and appropriate intonation.
Coaching
Many organizations implement coaching as a human resource development tool to foster employees' KSA. Coaching is defined as a day-to-day, hands-on process of helping employees solve work- and career-related problems (Ellinger et al., 2003; Hillmann et al., 1990). In addition to training, the present study also focuses on supervisors' coaching behaviors towards employees. The amount of empirical research evaluating the effects of coaching on performance or work attitudes is limited. To the author's knowledge, only one empirical study exists. In their cross-sectional survey study, Ellinger and colleagues (Ellinger et al., 2003) have found that supervisors' coaching behavior (as perceived by employees) was positively related to employees' job satisfaction and job performance at group level (as assessed by the supervisor). More empirical research is needed that describes the impact of coaching interventions on individual job performance, job involvement, and job satisfaction. In contrast to the Ellinger et al.'s study, future research should be based on longitudinal designs and assess objective performance data.
Outcome criteria of DI
The positive effects of DI are generally acknowledged. The present study explores these effects in greater detail. First, we discuss the effects of DI on job performance (explicit organizational goal). Next, we move our discussion to work-related attitudes (implicit organizational goals).
Job performance
The explicit goal of nearly all DI is to enhance employees' job performance. Many specific DI are designed to improve certain facets of job performance. That is, due to the high complexity of work tasks, several different DI are necessary in order for employees to achieve high levels of performance in all aspects of their work. In call centers, where the present study was conducted, employees are required to perform well in at least two areas. First, they need to engage in customer-oriented behaviors in order to satisfy customers on an interpersonal level. These soft skills include friendliness, courtesy, and understanding customers' intentions or problems (Bakker et al., 2003). Second, call center employees have to be productive, that is to demonstrate hard skills. In inbound call centers, where incoming customer calls are replied to, phone calls have to be as short as possible, while maintaining customer-oriented behaviors. Productive inbound employees can handle a high amount of calls per hour. In outbound call centers, productivity is often synonymous with successful selling. Thus, productive outbound employees have the ability to sell products or services. For both of these areas, specific training programs are designed. First, in order to foster call center employees' soft skills, non-technical training is implemented. Next, technical training is designed to enhance hard skills.
Work-related attitudes
In addition to job performance, the present study includes job involvement and job satisfaction as dependent variables. Each of these two work-related attitudes is described in turn.
A state of high job involvement implies a positive and relatively complete state of engagement of core aspects of the self in the job (Kanungo, 1982; Lodahl and Kejner, 1965). A large body of research relates the construct of job involvement to employee motivation, performance, and important job-related attitudes such as low turnover intentions and low absenteeism (Brown, 1996). In sum, organizations are interested in – and, consequently, invest in DI in order to develop – highly involved employees.
Job satisfaction is not only an important indicator of employees' wellbeing, but is also central for understanding the process of employee turnover. For example, it has been found that job satisfaction explains variance in withdrawal cognitions, turnover intentions, and actual turnovers, independent from organizational commitment (Tett and Meyer, 1993). In human resource development literature, job satisfaction is discussed as an important construct representing employees' interests (Guest, 1999).
In order to meet the high pace of organizational change and innovation, concepts such as continuing education (Kozlowski and Hults, 1987) and organizational learning are discussed. It is assumed that organizational learning requires highly involved employees who contribute to organizational effectiveness, even in times of change and under conditions of high uncertainty (Argyris, 1998). As a consequence, recent models of training effectiveness include dependent variables such as job involvement and job satisfaction (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995; Kraiger et al., 1993; Tannenbaum et al., 1991). Underlying these models is the idea that employees' participation in DI helps to identify and to cope better with the job (i.e. higher job involvement and job satisfaction). For example, in most DI, participants use the opportunity to ask job-related questions such as how to cooperate with colleagues, how to achieve an even better fit between individual abilities and interests on one hand and requirements such as high performance on the other hand, as well as how to deal with organizational constraints. A better fit might lead to higher job involvement (Lodahl and Kejner, 1965). Also, within the above-mentioned models of training effectiveness, it is assumed that participation in DI enhances trainees' job satisfaction. Trainees view the DI event as an investment from the organization's side.
Study goals and hypotheses
In general, the empirical training and development literature is limited by several issues (cf. Salas et al., 1997). First, prior research has been focusing on single, isolated DI (Arthur et al., 2003; Bates et al., 2007). As the present study assessed the impact of several DI on outcome criteria, it reflected more the reality of present day complex human resource management. Second, while prior research has been relying on subjective measures for frequency of DI such as self-reports, the present study assessed the frequency of participation in three DI (i.e. non-technical training, technical training, and coaching) per employee per time unit by objective indicators (computer-stored organizational records). Third, empirical research has often been limited by the implementation of single-source research designs. The present study provided a “stronger” design by using three independent sources of data. In addition to the computer-stored data (frequency of DI), the present study assessed participants' self-rated work-related attitudes. Also, participants' soft skills were rated by external observers and their hard skills were calculated from additional computer-stored data. Fourth, as prior research has often been limited by its cross-sectional research design, the present study's longitudinal design provided an advantage because results could be interpreted in a more causal way.
The present study first tested if training had an effect on subsequent job performance, while controlling for coaching. In the present study, the call center organization provided two kinds of training: Non-technical training aiming at enhancing soft skills, and technical training aiming at enhancing hard skills. Thus, these two kinds of training were hypothesized to have differential effects on dependent measures of job performance.
H1a. The frequency of non-technical training has a positive effect on subsequent soft skills, while controlling for frequency of technical training and coaching.
H1b. The frequency of technical training has a positive effect on subsequent hard skills, while controlling for frequency of non-technical training and coaching.
From the discussion of empirical literature it became obvious that while research demonstrates that training affects job performance, little is known about the way DI such as coaching influence outcome criteria such as job performance, job involvement and job satisfaction. However, the few empirical studies that have been conducted suggest that in general, DI have a positive effect on work-related attitudes. From a theoretical perspective, it might be argued that this is the case because employees perceive DI as an investment in their KSA, and, ultimately, in their careers (Ng et al., 2005). Therefore, the following hypotheses were proposed for the present study:
H2. The frequencies of three types of DI (non-technical and technical training, coaching) have a positive effect on subsequent job involvement.
H3. The frequencies of three types of DI (non-technical and technical training, coaching) have a positive effect on subsequent job satisfaction.
Methods
Context
Overall, 11 inbound and outbound call centers hosted by a single outhouse company participated in the study. These call centers included inbound as well as outbound tasks. All of the human resource development interventions described below aimed at equipping employees with the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) necessary for successful work. Participation in these DI was voluntary and during work time.
Development interventions (DI)
Non-technical training. Basic customer service skills were in the focus of this training. Customer-oriented behaviors such as appropriate intonation, specific phrases, and rules of courtesy were included in the respective training module. Trainers from the HR department provided this off-the-job in-house one-day training, which was based on presentations and role-play exercises. In sum, the training programs intended to equip employees with soft skills necessary for the broad range of call centers that was hosted by the outhouse company. Enhancing employees' job involvement and job satisfaction was not an explicit goal of this training.
Technical training. In contrast to non-technical training, the technical updating training programs intended to provide narrow-defined, call center specific KSA for the trainees. Product-specific knowledge was taught in these technical updating programs, which lasted about one day. Like the non-technical training, the technical training were off-the-job and in-house. The trainers were external subject matter experts. Presentation, discussion, and reading were the training methods utilized. As several products were distributed via phone in the respective call centers, employees could choose to take part in several subsequent technical updatings, if they desired to enhance their KSA.
Coaching. Call center supervisors provided individual coaching sessions for the employees. Issues regarding work and career, hard and soft skills, dealing with difficult customers, and problems with technical and software equipment were the focus of the individual, formal, one-on-one coaching sessions. The supervisor would prepare for each session and coach the respective employee at the workplace during normal working hours. Each of these sessions lasted about 20 minutes. On average, each employee was coached once per month.
Sample
Questionnaires were administered to a random sample of 100 employees working in the call centers. Full anonymity was assured, and open and honest answering to the questions was encouraged. The response rate was 71 percent, resulting in a final sample size of N=71. The mean age was 28 years (SD=7.8). The sample consisted of 44 female (47.7 percent) and 48 male (52.3 percent) employees.
Questionnaires
Job involvement. The complete 20-item scale of Lodahl and Kejner (1965) was implemented in order to assess employees' job involvement (e.g. “The most important things that happen to me involve my work”). Cronbach's Alpha was 0.74 for this scale.
Job satisfaction. For the assessment of job satisfaction, Neuberger and Allerbeck's (1978) job satisfaction survey was implemented. More specifically, satisfaction with work in general, with colleagues, with supervisor, with boss of the department, with pay, and with career opportunities was assessed. The reliability estimate (Alpha) for this scale was 0.79.
Job performance
Performance (soft skills). For the purpose of the present study, new and specific performance measures were constructed. Since the work-related behaviors of call center agents vary slightly between in- and outbound, it was deemed necessary to construct two different instruments for assessing performance. In the following paragraph the construction of the inbound instrument is described. It should be noted that construction of the outbound instrument followed the same procedure.
An effort was made to ensure high validity of the instruments as they were established in cooperation with HR experts, trainers, and senior management employed in the organization. First, trainers and HR experts identified a set of 28/29 behaviors (inbound/outbound) that were:
- trained during the training sessions;
- highly relevant to organizational success;
- regularly displayed by employees; and
- easy to observe by both supervisors and external raters.
Next, in discussion with senior management of all of the 11 call centers, the validity of this set of items was discussed. It turned out that the two sets of items offered a broad and comprehensive description of agents' work in all of the call centers. In addition, each senior manager confirmed that the behaviors were observed frequently during work and highly relevant to success. Finally, HR experts helped with the definition of behavioral anchors for each item. All of the items were accompanied by a five-point Likert-type scale. A typical item was: “The employee is responsive and individually considerate towards each customer”. Behavioral anchors for this item were:
- very inflexible formulations;
- almost no variable formulations);
- few variable formulations);
- some variable formulations); and
- lots of variable formulations).
In sum, the described procedure yielded valid instruments for assessing in- and outbound performance. As for the reliability, Cronbach's Alpha was 0.73 for inbound, and 0.78 for outbound.
Performance assessment (soft skills). In contrast to the vast majority of empirical studies, the present study assessed performance neither by self-report nor by supervisor ratings. A number of problems are connected to these types of measurement, such as inaccuracy, leniency, or lack of agreement between ratings (Harris and Schaubroeck, 1988; Mount et al., 1998). As a consequence, in order to assure a more objective form of assessment, external observers were recruited as raters for the present study. In cooperation with the outhouse call center organization, ten graduate students of I/O psychology volunteering for an internship were recruited. After being introduced to the organization for two days, they participated in a training course. The objective of this training was to introduce the rating instrument described above and to practice its use until high interrater-agreement with the coach (a professional trainer employed by the organization) was documented. As the interrater-agreement of the different raters (students) was highly satisfactory (Inbound: r(wg)=0.98; p < 0.01; Outbound: r(wg)=0.97; p < 0.01; cf. James et al., 1984), the raters were approved to start their work within the organization and to begin rating participants' performance.
Performance (hard skills). In call centers, hard skill performance data are used daily in order to provide employees with performance feedback. In inbound call centers, customers' requests have to be handled as quickly as possible. Thus, the average phone call time is a standard indicator used for performance feedback. In outbound call centers, the ratio between total customer contacts and successful selling contacts is the performance indicator of choice. It is important to notice that prior to this study, interviews with the respective call center managers revealed that these indicators were the best performance indicators possible.
Performance assessment (hard skills). The indicators mentioned above were available per employee from computer-stored data. The individual scores of the in- and outbound ratings were combined into a single score (labeled hard skills) after standardizing values around a mean of zero in each case.
Procedure
After the first ten weeks of their respective career, call center employees were handed out surveys assessing job involvement and job satisfaction. This time frame was chosen for two reasons. First, it was expected that attitudes such as job involvement and job satisfaction had been established within the first ten weeks and could be articulated by employees. Second, prior to the study, organizational experts revealed that on average, employees took part in several of the described HR activities within the first ten weeks of their career. Thus, it was expected that enough variance in DI was available within the chosen time frame.
After approximately 16 days (SD=27.6 days), surveys returned. The date surveys were returned by agents was the date when the frequency of former participation in the three above described HR activities (non-technical training, technical training, and coaching) was obtained from organizational records.
Results
Table I provides with descriptive statistics. Differential relationships between DI and outcome criteria were apparent.
In order to test the hypotheses, multiple regression analyses were performed. For each of the dependent measures (soft and hard skills, job involvement, and job satisfaction), a separate analysis was performed. Table II reports the results of the four independent regression analyses.
Support was found for both the hypothesized relationships between non-technical training and soft skills (H1a) and technical training and hard skills (H1b). Coaching did not affect any of the performance indicators.
In support for H2, it was found that technical training showed an impact on subsequent job involvement. However, no other DI impacted job involvement. Finally, as for job satisfaction, only coaching showed an impact. Thus, limited support was found for H3.
Discussion
The main contribution of the present study is the finding that independent DI do have effects on multiple outcome criteria being relevant for organizational success. More specifically, non-technical training has an effect on soft skills and technical training has an impact on hard skills. In contrast to earlier research, these results hold true while controlling for the influence of the respective other DI. In the present study, the three DI under focus were the main HR strategies implemented by the call center organization in order to enhance employees' job performance. Thus, regressing the respective outcome measure on the simultaneous DI represents a realistic test of the usefulness of the DI. This specific research design allows for a more realistic evaluation of the effectiveness of DI. Thus, the present study extends prior research that has focused on the influence of single DI.
The second contribution of the present study is the result that technical training also has an effect on job involvement. Thus, it is shown that technical training is not only necessary to update employees' KSA (Kozlowski and Hults, 1987), but also to foster employees' job involvement. These results provide support for recent models of training effectiveness (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995) that highlight the role of work-related attitudes in the training process. Also, this result is in contrast with earlier research that has found no relationships between participation in training and job involvement (Osca et al., 2005). In the present study, technical training was implemented several times in order to update employees' knowledge during their first weeks within the organization. It is important to acknowledge the accumulating effect technical training has on the generation of job involvement in newly assigned employees within the first months of their career.
With regard to coaching, the results show that it this particular DI has an effect on job satisfaction, while controlling for the two kinds of training. These results replicate results that have found by Ellinger et al. (2003). However, as the results of the present study are based on a more rigorous research design (i.e. longitudinal data, controlling for alternative DI, multiple sources of data), they can be interpreted in a more causal way. Thus, we can be more confident in the result that coaching leads to job satisfaction. While the reported main effects for the three independent DI are interesting in itself, one might ask whether possible interaction effects for the three DI exist. Additional regression analyses revealed no interaction effects for the three DI on the three outcome criteria.
Implications for practice
In general, all DI that are included in this study make a positive contribution to organizational goals. However, their specific impact on key hard and soft skills as well as on work-related attitudes varies. Organizational decision makers are interested in DI that impact specific organizational goals. Our results show that coaching is not useful to foster employees' job performance. Thus, organizations that implement multiple DI in order to foster single goals should evaluate the effect of these “competing” DI. Evaluation and utility analysis (Rowold and Mönninghoff, 2005) are means of providing organizational decision makers with appropriate, rational information (cf. Goldstein and Ford, 2002).
It is important to note that the results of the present study demonstrate positive effects of DI on implicit organizational goals such as job satisfaction and job involvement. As a consequence, organizations being interested in enhancing positive employees' job-related attitudes could rely on DI such as training. As an example, non-technical training is positively related to trainees' job involvement, meaning that this training provided opportunity to connect core aspects of the self to the job on a deeper level than before training. As a high level of job involvement is negatively related to absenteeism and turnover, non-technical training might be a means to prevent these negative behaviors.
Implications for theory
The results of the present study supported the notion that DI have positive effects on work-related attitudes such as job involvement and satisfaction. Thus, models that suggested the link between participation in DI and work-related attitudes (e.g. Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995) were supported. Moreover, other recent models of the training process receiving considerable attention from the research community (Holton, 2005, 1996) should be expanded with regard to this link.
While recent models of training effectiveness acknowledge the impact of supervisory support, they do not explicitly include DI such as supervisory coaching behavior that might foster the outcome criteria such as job performance, job involvement, and job satisfaction. Thus, present models of training effectiveness are limited as they refer to one single intervention (i.e. training). However, as multiple interventions can be found in an increasing number of organizations, extended models of training effectiveness should include influencing factors such as supervisory coaching behaviors on outcome criteria. In general, the role of simultaneous DI has implications for model development. For example, career development programs might affect employees' attitudes and expectations regarding future training (Wolf et al., 1995). Thus, career variables and interventions should be included into future theoretical models of training effectiveness (Noe, 1986; Noe and Steffy, 1987; Rowold, 2007a; Rowold et al., 2007b).
Limitations and directions for future research
The present study explored the effect of simultaneous DI on job performance and employees' attitudes in Germany. The results obtained might have been culture-specific. Thus, the results should be replicated in other cultures. In addition to the independent variables tested in the present study, variables that consistently influenced the dependent measures should be included in future research. For example, tenure, age, and personality variables might explain variance in job involvement (cf. Brown, 1996). Also, constructs such as employees' individual autonomy and motivation are likely to affect outcome variables such as job satisfaction and performance. Moreover, on the side of independent variables, additional DI such as peer coaching, job assignments and workplace learning should be included in future research (Garavan et al., 2002). In the present study, the average length of coaching was only 20 minutes. Thus, in comparison to technical and non-technical training, the coaching intervention was very short. This might be one reason why coaching did not impact job involvement and job performance. Future studies should be based on either a longer time frame for detecting the cumulative effect of coaching or even evaluate extended coaching sessions. Also, the role of organizational structure and practices should be explored, as these factors were hypothesized to influence trainees' motivation and performance (Bates et al., 2007). These extended sets of independent variables will allow for a more thorough understanding of the effectiveness of DI in organizations. Participation in all three DI was voluntary. Participants might be highly motivated to participate in these DI. In contrast, motivation for participation in mandatory DI might be lower. Thus, future studies should focus on mandatory trainings and include trainee's motivation. Finally, although the present study was characterized by methodological rigor, future research should control for initial levels of dependent variables, therewith allowing for an even more rigorous test of hypotheses.
Table IDescriptive statistics and intercorrelations of study variables (n=71)
Table IIResults of multiple regressions on job performance, job involvement, and job satisfaction (standardized β's)
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About the author
Jens Rowold is Assistant Professor at the Psychological Institute II, University of Muenster, Germany. His main research interests are training and development with a special focus on organizational learning, career management, leadership training, and the transfer process. Jens Rowold can be contacted at: rowold@psy.uni-muenster.de