Employer-Sponsored Training And Job Retention Of Mid-Career Employees

Abstract

Recent research on training has been focused on explaining the empirical finding that many employers often sponsor training that employees could potentially use in other firms (i.e., general training). This paper studies employer-sponsored general training for mid-career employees, who form an important but neglected subset of workers in the training context. The results indicate that college-educated workers in specialized professional occupations are the most common recipients of employer-sponsored general training. Analysis of employee retention rates indicates that mid-career workers that receive employer sponsored training are less likely to voluntarily quit their jobs post-training. Cross training and computer training have the most significant positive effects on employee job retention while only a regular training program to upgrade skills appears to produce positive employee job retention effects.