Employee cooperation through training: A multi-method approach

Teams perform better when employees cooperate, for example through helping coworkers. However, decisions to cooperate are not always straightforward. A first priority for employees is to finish their own tasks and helping a coworker takes away time and effort from achieving this goal. Organizations therefore benefit from finding ways to motivate employees to cooperate. Can investments in training encourage employees to cooperate? And since cooperation involves at least one coworker: how does team cohesion affect employees’ decisions to cooperate and their reactions to training opportunities? Does the entire team behave more cooperatively when investments in training are made? Taking a unique approach, Nikki van Gerwen answers these questions by combining insights from a laboratory experiment, a vignette experiment, and a large-scale survey. Results consistently show that when employers invest in employee training, employees reciprocate to this kind gesture by increasing their cooperative behavior. This reciprocity norm reaches further than the direct exchange between the employer and her employee. After participating in training, employees will also become willing to reciprocate to this investment in a more generalized manner by helping their coworkers. The relations among coworkers play a crucial role in fostering cooperation: when employees know each other and have formed strong social bonds helping behavior occurs more naturally. However, in highly cohesive teams investing in employee training has a less beneficial effect on promoting employee helping behavior. Investments in training are most effective when team cohesion is low.