Please Note: This is a summary of an article originally posted in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) on April 24, 2026. Click here for the original article and links. The Australian L&D Network has no affiliation with HBR.

Upskilling Employees Frees Their Managers for More-Strategic Work

Organisations routinely ask whether employee training “pays off” by boosting productivity. New research suggests that when firms track the results of such programs, they often look for efficiency in the wrong places.

Researchers followed a Colombian government agency that had randomly assigned 12% of its frontline staffers to attend a 120-hour program on legal analysis, writing, time management, and basic IT skills. Using weekly goal-attainment scores before and after the program, the researchers found that four to six months later the performance of workers who’d participated had risen by about 10%. Their untrained peers, in contrast, showed no significant change in performance.

However, the most meaningful impact of the training appeared to have happened one level up. Using email metadata to measure who communicated with whom, the researchers found that the trained workers had sharply reduced the number of messages they sent their managers. The untrained workers, in comparison, had reduced them far less. The training participants’ managers subsequently were more likely to achieve their own, more-strategic goals. Those who’d been most connected to trainees before the program enjoyed the largest productivity gains.

In fact, the researchers say that the training’s largest benefit was to managers. Freeing up their time had ripple effects on the organisation’s productivity, particularly as, at this agency, managers were heavily involved in valuable strategic tasks affecting their entire teams.

The researchers believe that their study provides evidence that upskilling programs should be judged not only by how much faster or better trainees do their own jobs but also by how much less assistance they then require from the people above them. Especially in knowledge-intensive organizations where managers juggle oversight and strategic work, freeing up even a small share of their bandwidth can generate a lot of value.

Our Sponsors:

The Australian Learning & Development Network’s events and resources are available free of charge to our members due to the generous support of our sponsors. As such, if you’re looking for any externally provided capability development services, we kindly ask that you contact them to discuss your needs.

• Frontline Management Training Australia – Purpose-Built Leadership and Management Training for Frontline Managers and Staff
• Australian Public Sector Training – Leadership and Management Training Specifically for People Working in Public Sector Organisations
• Executive Development Australia – Inspiring Executive Excellence