EVALUATING TRAINING

August 5, 2013

At least once a year (and, quarterly if you can muster the staff tine to do it), we should all take an inventory of our training initiatives and objectively evaluate how they meet the following tests:

• Have your training initiatives been directly tied to your company’s business objectives?
• Have you performed a “cost/benefit” analysis for each of your training programs and, if so, has each contributed positively to your organization’s bottom line?
• Have you tailored your training to fill individual “knowledge gaps” or are you, mistakenly, providing the same training requirements for everyone in a specific job classification, paying no attention to their “existing knowledge” and, therefore, wasting both time and money?
• Has your company successfully linked employee incentives to training outcomes?
• Are your training programs effective in meeting present-day learning styles, particularly for those many individuals who do not read above a 4th Grade level?
• Are you concentrating on delivering “performance based” training or is your training exclusively theoretical based?
• Are you providing preemptive training or are you, mistakenly, limiting your solutions to reactive training? (Remember, it’s better to keep the horse in the barn than to spend time chasing after it.)
• Are you measuring long-term retention or simply confining your evaluations to post-tests taken immediately after the formal training is completed? (Longer term retention is the ultimate test of your training initiatives.)

Positive answers to these eight questions will give you an evaluation your trainees have a right to expect — and will effectively contribute to the important values your organization requires.