Learning Curve Models for Construction Workers

Abstract

Workplace training aims to enhance the performance of trainees by improving their specific skills. Unfortunately, the outcome of such trainings in terms of the percentage of increase in trainees’ performance is not generally measured. On one hand, this lack of measurement results in contractors not recognizing the importance of training in enhancing workers’ performance, and on the other hand, the training providers do not receive constructive feedback on the efficacy of their sessions. This study therefore attempts to bridge this gap by developing a regression model of the socioemotional, cognitive, and technical skills of workers and their performance. Data was collected on 137 workers from four training centers in India. Using the developed model, a learning curve was drawn between performance and training time. Additionally, skills versus training time curves were also plotted. The results indicate that workers’ performance after training was far below the desired level of employers; the reason for this emerges from skills versus training time curves, where it is found that the training does not focus on enhancing socioemotional and cognitive skills. Therefore, the study recommends that training providers incorporate these skills in their training curriculum to achieve more desirable outputs from training.