A recent study featured by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge underscores the value of employee training programs, not only for the productivity of those being trained but for their managers as well.

Researchers Christopher T. Stanton and Miguel Espinosa evaluated a 16-week upskilling program at a Colombian federal regulatory agency and found that employees who participated completed 10% more work, sent fewer emails to their supervisors,  and were more likely to remain with the organization over the next three years.

The downstream effects extended to managers, whose productivity increased by approximately 3%, with an even greater benefit, around 8%, for those supervising trained staff. 

According to Stanton, the indirect gains for managers accounted for nearly half of the program’s total benefits. “The question for organizations to ask is: How much time are we going to have to devote for someone higher up in the hierarchy to solve employees’ problems?” he noted.

The findings suggest that organizations may be underestimating training’s return on investment by focusing too narrowly on trainees’ output rather than broader impacts on team function and leadership capacity. 

As AI tools help scale training efforts, the research raises new questions about whether improved frontline competence could reduce the need for traditional management structures over time.

“From a leadership perspective, if you double everyone’s skill, do you need as many managers overseeing them?” Stanton said. “And the answer is almost surely ‘no.’”