Evaluating Training to Achieve Strategic Goals
The ultimate goal of any training program is to help the organization achieve success. Before we discuss how to evaluate a training program to determine if that goal is being met, we have to understand the concepts behind training evaluation. Training evaluation is:
- Looking for indicators of progress toward and achievement of strategic goals;
- Understanding what it is about the training process that is helping employees
learn and helping them improve and sustain their performance over time;
- Identifying aspects of the organization that are barriers to learning and high performance.
If all you are concerned about is putting on an excellent training event (such as a workshop, seminar, or video-conference), then just measure the quality of the event itself and use the findings to improve the event. However, if your goal is high performance, you must apply a much broader set of measures and use the information in a more proactive way. Each element of a high performance training process, as well as the interaction of these elements, must be measured. For example, can learning goals be achieved by redesigning a work process instead of creating a new training event?
The measures do not have
to be rigorous. In fact, the simpler the better. The point is to collect data
(numbers and descriptions) that help customers of training (such as the supervisors
of trainees) understand the progress that employees and the organization are
making toward business goals. These customers need to know what is working
well and what should be changed. If managers of a manufacturing line are presented
with evidence that their behavior is a barrier to the performance improvement
of employees on that line (for example, they don’t allow trainees to apply
their new learning), those managers might decide to support performance improvement.
Until they have this feedback, they are unlikely to behave any differently.
Methods
of Measurement
Once you decide what needs to be measured, why it needs to be measured, and
how you will use the information in the organization to achieve high performance,
then you are ready to select the appropriate method of measurement. If you
are training a cross-functional group to become a high performance team, for
example, you may want to:
- Survey team members about their attitudes toward teamwork.
- Interview team members about the effectiveness of communication among team members.
- Observe the team members in action to understand how they work together.
- Survey the team’s internal and external customers about their perceptions of the team’s effectiveness.
- Examine team products for indicators of quality.
Involving Managers. Managers throughout the organization are important partners in the application of these methods and in the utilization of the information. The results of these measures should be reported to key managers who can use the information to improve performance. By bringing managers into this process, you build a sense of organization-wide ownership and commitment to performance improvement. The responsibility for learning and change shifts to the people in the organization who have the most influence on the organization's success.