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New Research Analyzes Effects of Learning on Employee Performance
The pandemic has affected the type of learning the IBM employees in the study pursued, as this graph shows, but the researchers found that "overall learning consumption remains high."
In a new working paper, Fei Qin of the University of Bath and Thomas A. Kochan of the MIT Sloan School of Management analyze how the use of a digital platform for training and learning at IBM Corp. affects the performance and promotion of technical sales personnel.
Qin, who is an Associate Professor in Management at the University of Bath, and Kochan, who is the George M. Bunker Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School, studied the use of IBM's internal "Your Learning" training platform, which incorporates artificial intelligence technologies, by IBM employees in several technical sales occupations during the time period between January 2014 and September 2019. Qin and Kochan found that spending time using the platform to earn internal credentials that IBM calls "badges" benefitted employees in this population, in that earning badges (particularly for skills the company considered strategic) was positively associated with better achievement of performance targets and an increased likelihood of getting promoted.
Qin and Kochan also found that the "Your Learning" system was heavily used, with IBM employees spending an average of 77 hours on learning activities in 2019—a number that increased in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"This case study provides a window into what an individual firm can do to promote learning, skill upgrading, and career mobility for workers and managers employed in occupations facing significant technological and product market changes," Qin and Kochan conclude.