PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between perceived employee training effectiveness and job satisfaction, motivation and commitment.Design/methodology/approachThe study examined the responses of 134 employees and lower managers, of five large Greek organizations, after they had completed a training program. The questions asked contained information about the employee attitudes towards tvhe training received, as well as their attitudes towards their employers.FindingsThe results of the study provide support to the hypotheses proposed, indicating that there is a significant correlation between the employee perceived training effectiveness and their commitment, job satisfaction and motivation. Additionally, high correlations were found between the latter three variables.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to examining employee feelings, not taking into account their personal characteristics, which may be important.Practical implicationsThe implications of the findings of this study for managers and especially for Human Resource professionals are quite significant, given their roles in funding, designing and delivering training interventions. Not only does it appear to be important, offering training programs to one's employees but, the training program content must be perceived as effective and of value to those participating in it. This will have a positive effect, according to the findings of this study, on key employee attitudes, which appear to be related to a greater or a lesser extent, in the pertinent literature, to organizational performance outcomes including, productivity, turnover and absenteeismOriginality/valueThe study is ground‐breaking, given that there are no prior studies examining the relationship between the variables considered in the present one.