Development and validation of a five-level developmental model for new graduate employees

The aim of this research was to create a developmental model for new graduate employees according to improvements in their performance. The model’s scope covered the period when employees take part in apprenticeship training after graduation from college or university. The process of developing and validating the model referred to the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Instruction’s competency development model as a framework and involved six steps. This research analyzed 111 freshly graduated recruits who had recently been hired by a leading travel company in Japan. The final model includes five apprenticeship levels, namely beginning, elementary, intermediate, advanced, and end of apprenticeship, with criteria for performance in planning and implementation. To validate the model, three transitions in the developmental levels over six months in 2017 and nine months in 2020 were examined using the model’s performance criteria. The results show that the transitions for the three companies reflect the characteristics of their new graduate employees. This indicates that the proposed model may be valid for determining the development levels of new graduate recruits and can have a certain level of discriminative power. This model can serve as a helpful tool for planning on-the-job and off-the-job training to support new employee development, comprehending their current development levels, and providing a guideline for the next step for further development.