The Impact of Relative Performance Information on Employees’ Persistence in Voluntary Training

Firms increasingly rely on voluntary training programs to enhance employees’ skills, yet such initiatives often suffer from high dropout rates. We investigate whether providing employees with information about their relative training performance affects their persistence in voluntary training. Social comparison theory suggests that relative performance information (RPI) addresses employees’ inherent need to assess their ability relative to others and maintain a positive self-image by improving their standing. However, whether RPI on training performance is sufficient to increase persistence in voluntary training in the field is unclear. Besides particularly low barriers for dropping out, voluntary training is typically noncore to employees’ primary tasks and often lacks a meaningful comparison group because participants come from a large, heterogeneous, and largely anonymous pool of employees. This calls into question whether the conditions required for social comparison mechanisms are sufficiently met for RPI to take effect. We study this question using a field experiment in a firm offering a voluntary online training program. During the training, employees either receive RPI about their training performance relative to others or only their own performance score. We show that RPI significantly increases employees’ persistence in the training. Consistent with our proposed theoretical mechanism, this effect is particularly pronounced for more competitive individuals. We further find that the likelihood of completing the training is higher and people return to the training quicker if they receive RPI. Our study highlights a simple and cost-effective way to enhance the effectiveness of voluntary training.

This paper was accepted by Jan Bouwens, accounting.

Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.08448 .