第13章産業・組織心理学

Training is an important element of success and performance in many jobs. Most jobs begin with an orientation period during which the new employee is provided information regarding the company history, policies, and administrative protocols such as time tracking, benefits, and reporting requirements. An important goal of orientation training is to educate the new employee about the organizational culture, the values, visions, hierarchies, norms and ways the company’s employees interact—essentially how the organization is run, how it operates, and how it makes decisions. There will also be training that is specific to the job the individual was hired to do, or training during the individual’s period of employment that teaches aspects of new duties, or how to use new physical or software tools. Much of these kinds of training will be formalized for the employee; for example, orientation training is often accomplished using software presentations, group presentations by members of the human resources department or with people in the new hire’s department (Figure 13.9).

Mentoring is a form of informal training in which an experienced employee guides the work of a new employee. In some situations, mentors will be formally assigned to a new employee, while in others a mentoring relationship may develop informally.

Mentoring effects on the mentor and the employee being mentored, the protégé, have been studied in recent years. In a review of mentoring studies, Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng, & DuBois (2008) found significant but small effects of mentoring on performance (i.e., behavioral outcomes), motivation and satisfaction, and actual career outcomes. In a more detailed review, Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima (2004) found that mentoring positively affected a protégé’s compensation and number of promotions compared with non-mentored employees. In addition, protégés were more satisfied with their careers and had greater job satisfaction. All of the effects were small but significant. Eby, Durley, Evans, & Ragins (2006) examined mentoring effects on the mentor and found that mentoring was associated with greater job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Gentry, Weber, & Sadri (2008) found that mentoring was positively related with performance ratings by supervisors. Allen, Lentz, & Day (2006) found in a comparison of mentors and non-mentors that mentoring led to greater reported salaries and promotions.

Mentoring is recognized to be particularly important to the career success of women (McKeen & Bujaki, 2007) by creating connections to informal networks, reducing feelings of isolation, and with overcoming discrimination in job promotions.

Researchers have worked to understand the impacts of gender, race, and ethnicity on mentoring relationships, especially whether outcomes differ based on the gender or racial/ethnic makeup of the mentor-mentee pair. Overall, women and members of underrepresented racial/ethnic populations do not lack access to mentors, but they do lack access to mentors of the same gender, race, and ethnicity, because the senior roles in many organizations are made up of White men (MLDC, 2010). Results from these studies are mixed, but generally suggest that pairings made up of two people of the same gender or race/ethnicity have better psychosocial outcomes, such as a feeling of more support (Koberg, Boss, & Goodman, 1998; Allen et al, 2006). On the other hand, women and people of color typically experience greater career advancement or higher pay when mentored by people of a different gender or race/ethnicity (Parks-Yancy, 2012).

A 2003 study by Arthur, Bennett, Edens, and Bell examined multiple other studies to determine how effective organizational training is. Their results showed that training was effective, based on four types of measurement: (1) the immediate response of the employee to the training effort, (2) testing at the end of training to demonstrate that learning outcomes were met, (3) behavioral measurements of job activities by supervisors, and (4) results such as productivity and profits. The examined studies represented diverse forms of training including self-instruction, lecture and discussion, and computer assisted training.