Companies weighing how to allocate limited training budgets may be underestimating the risk of alienating their strongest employees, according to new research from Cornell University. The study found that high performers in meritocratic workplaces react negatively when professional development opportunities are directed toward lower performers, while workers in more egalitarian settings tend to accept such decisions with less resentment.
The research arrives at a moment when employers are pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence adoption, often at the expense of workforce development. Training budgets have contracted, forcing companies to make difficult choices about which employees deserve additional support. That scarcity has turned a routine human resources decision into a potential source of workplace friction.
Martin Wiernsperger, an accounting professor at Cornell's business school and a co-author of the study, explained that workplace culture shapes how employees interpret training decisions. In an egalitarian environment, where workers have less control over their tasks and are treated more equally, low performers feel more entitled to extra training and tend to take it for granted. In a meritocratic setting, where employees have greater autonomy and can choose their own projects, high performers are more likely to feel they should be rewarded for their efforts.
«People might say, well, everyone should get the chance to improve because performance differences might simply reflect bad luck,» Wiernsperger said, describing the egalitarian mindset. By contrast, in a meritocratic workplace, employees believe they earned their advantages. Wiernsperger cited the example of a consulting firm that lets employees choose their projects rather than assigning them based on expertise. «We all had the same chance to start at the same level, essentially, because we could all choose what we think we're good at,» he said. «So if I perform better, then I've invested more effort, and I essentially deserve it.»
To test these dynamics, Wiernsperger and his team designed an experiment that simulated a professional environment. They recruited college and graduate students to take a quiz testing knowledge of idioms that were mostly in either English or German. In the egalitarian version, students were randomly assigned to one of the two quizzes, whether or not they spoke German. In the meritocratic version, they could choose which quiz to take. Participants playing managers then decided whether to offer additional training to those who performed well or those who performed poorly.
The results largely confirmed Wiernsperger's suspicions: high performers objected to being excluded from professional development in a competitive environment. But one finding surprised him. Regardless of workplace culture, managers were far more likely to assign training to lower performers, with two-thirds doing so in the experiment, hoping to improve their productivity and output. «At least in our setting, managers thought training should go to the lower performers—and they didn't fully think through the fairness implications this might have for the higher performers,» Wiernsperger said.
The study suggests companies could risk alienating top talent if they automatically grant training opportunities to lower performers, particularly when workers are eager for upskilling. With AI reshaping the workforce and recurring layoffs at major companies, employees may be seeking a competitive advantage and have likely noticed that employers are demanding more without investing as much in their success. In a low-hire, low-fire market, some workers may be looking for ways to advance within their current workplace or position themselves for when hiring picks up again.
«This reaction to the training allocation is most salient when employees feel they are in a competitive setting,» Wiernsperger said. «I guess that also speaks to the labor market that we are in. Employees compete for a limited number of promotions, compete for pay raises, and even compete to stay in the company—since lower performers might be kicked out.»
The findings carry practical implications for managers navigating constrained budgets. Companies that default to training lower performers without considering how high achievers perceive the decision may inadvertently signal that effort and results go unrewarded. In meritocratic workplaces especially, where employees believe advancement is tied to performance, overlooking top talent for development opportunities could erode motivation and drive turnover among the very workers organizations most want to keep.