Training, Communications Patterns, and Spillovers Inside Organizations
Most organizations utilize hierarchies to facilitate specialization, with managers assisting workers on tasks beyond their capabilities. As workers gain skills, they require less help, freeing up manager time. In this paper, we estimate direct productivity treatment effects for individual workers and spillovers to managers after a randomly assigned training program for frontline workers in a Colombian government agency. Trained workers improved their individual production, while help requests to managers declined, enabling managers to focus on higher-value work. Accounting for vertical spillovers to managers meaningfully changes the organization's implied return on investment from training.
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