Section Fivealso found it to be associated with profit and firm overall
performance in wholesale/retail industries. As noted earlier,
their analysis also controlled for number of employees in the
firms. Yield analysis had correlations across all industries with
profit and overall firm performance.
Training
It has been estimated that U.S. companies spend $55.3 billion
on training each year.^86 Although the U.S. lags behind several
other industrialized countries in training, such an expenditure
provides some indication that many firms view training as a
high-performance practice. Nonetheless, until recently, there
has been little evidence on its effect on firm performance. In
the past, companies were slow to evaluate the effectiveness of
their training programs. However, there is ample evidence that
the value of training has come under increased scrutiny. For
example, a recent survey of training professionals revealed that
93 percent of the respondents reported greater pressure to
show a return for their employers’ investments in training.^87
A recent empirical study focused on the performance
impact of training in an open-pit mining operation of the
Cyprus Sierrita Corporation. Approximately 200 of the
company’s 770 employees at this site work in mining
operations. A time series of normalized productivity data for