Worker Skills and Organizational Spillovers: Evidence from Linked Training and Communications Data

Abstract:

How does increasing the skill of some workers affect the output of the organization as a whole? To answer this question, we study the effects of a randomized training program that occurred in a Colombian government agency. While trained workers substantially improved their individual production, we find that spillovers affecting managers' productivity are larger than the direct gains from training. We use email data to understand the mechanism behind these spillovers and find that benefits for managers arise from two sources. First, trained workers send fewer emails to their bosses, and boss productivity increases as emails decline. Second, relatively senior trained frontline workers form an informal layer to help junior frontline workers in lieu of managers. In our setting, accounting for intra-organization spillovers doubles the implied return from upskilling workers.