Nick Pennebaker can’t help but cringe when he hears the words “employee training".

Three months ago, the Dallas-based marketing manager was stuck in a room with 50 others for three days of finance discussions. The six-hour sessions were hellish, in part because they had nearly nothing to do with his job.

It’s not the first bad training experience Pennebaker has had. He says he’s spent too much time trapped in rooms listening to people talk about things that don’t apply directly to his work. “It can be a waste of time,” he says. “There’s a lot of BS being sent our way.”

Several studies show that employee training can be more problematic than productive. A 2010 McKinsey & Company report found just 25% of respondents felt that training programmes had a measurable improvement on performance. A 2015 study from online training company 24x7 Learning found that only 12% of employees apply new skills learned in training to their jobs.