The rationale behind on-the-job training is for new employees to acquire skills and simultaneously apply these skills to their work. Undeniably, skills can only be learned and perfected over a reasonable period of time. Relying on on-the-job training to impart skills that are to be used immediately by employees poses a risk to productivity. This is especially evident in peak hours when tasks to be accomplished may exceed the capabilities of the available staff. New employees with limited skills will not be able to provide the best services. In fact, if they require constant or frequent assistance and/or supervision from another worker, they may, in fact, slow down operations and productivity.
Because this type of training is unstructured, new employees can be trained on the job by any employee they are working with. Supervisors or fellow employees may not be experts on the topic or trained to teach, and therefore may lack the skills to effectively pass on information to the new employee. Additionally, information that is wrong or incomplete can passed on to the novice employees, thereby increasing the chances of hazards and costly mistakes on the job.
Informal on-the-job training is not always a planned event in an organization's calendar. It is ad hoc, so it may not be given the priority that it may otherwise require. Employees and supervisors may rush through the training in an attempt to save time and money for the company. The consequence of this is that rushed training becomes a time-waster for the employees, supervisor and the company. Most importantly, the new employees do not fully acquire the skills and knowledge required to properly do their job.
Unstructured on-the-job training lacks standardized instructions and procedures of training new employees. This leads to inconsistency in the skills and knowledge acquired by the new employees. At the end of the training, some employees may not be able to correctly apply the skills and knowledge they have acquired from the training. Additionally, organizations do not always keep a record or account of informal on-the-job training in terms of resources used, employee learning and return on investment. In this way, an organization is not able to know if the training is relevant or not.