Although organizations offer many formal and informal professional development opportunities for their employees, few organizations actually measure the influence their training efforts have to the bottom line. For example, companies may offer customer service training where employees are reminded of the skills necessary to deliver quality services and satisfy their customers’ needs and expectations. Rarely though, do companies determine if employees actually learned the concepts presented, changed their behavior on the job, or even if it improved the organization’s customer satisfaction benchmarks.
So how do you measure the impact or your training efforts have to the bottom line? Correlating your training to your business results can be tricky. Luckily however, Donald Kirkpatrick offers organizations an approach to this dilemma. Kirkpatrick’s model of training evaluation requires the training professional to evaluate their efforts on four levels: reaction, learning, behavior and results.
Level One – Reaction. Typically, this level uses a likert scale and surveys to determine participant satisfaction. Often referred to as smile sheets, these instruments measure the participants’ reaction to the material, the instructor, and the training experience itself. They do not however, measure if learning actually took place. Kirkpatrick believes this is a very necessary step in the process of determining the value of training. If participants’ reaction to the training is negative, chances are participants will not learn new skills. If reactions are positive though, learning is more likely to take place. Organizations that only measure reaction are making the assumption that just because the opinion meter may be positive that new knowledge and skills will be applied on the job.
Level Two – Learning: This level requires organization to actually measure each participant’s knowledge and skills through testing. Tests can be administered that are directly related to the material presented and focused on job competencies. More and more professions are requiring workers to become certified, usually by passing a competency-based exam, as a condition of employment. To effectively measure if learning took place, pre and post tests can be administered to participants to gage what skills were learned. Comparative data from this level can be very helpful to trainers as they continuously improve their curriculum and/or delivery of the material. It is important to realize however that even though people may learn new skills, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are demonstrating these skills back on the job.
Level Three – Behavior: Level three evaluation addresses the issue of behavior. As a result of a participant’s positive reaction to the training and assuming that learning took place, are they changing their behavior on the job? In order to determine if behavior has changed, training and development staff must make observations of specific tasks being performed before and after training so that a comparison of behavior can be made. This can be easily accomplished when teaching “hard” skills. For example, an organization who wants its employees to start utilizing more features of its spreadsheet software can measure employees’ behavior before the training event occurs. They can gather data on how many spreadsheets are produced, or what spreadsheet features are being utilized by the employees. They can also measure the same behavior after the training to determine if employees are producing more or better spreadsheets. For “soft” skills such as customer service, this can be more difficult, but not impossible. The use of behavioral checklists before and after a training event has been found to be very effective in measuring behavioral change of these skills.
Level Four – Organizational Results: The final level of evaluation is an approach which looks at organizational results before and after training. This level of evaluation measures the organization’s results, not the individuals’. As a result of a positive reaction, learning taking place and behavior change, what is the result to the organization? Is it improved efficiency in your processes? Is it improved customer satisfaction? Is it improved financial success or a reduction of cycle time or reduced costs? Level four evaluations require the training professional to conduct a comparative analysis of these measures and correlate them to the training material. Level four analysis can be very difficult and time consuming. At the same time, it can be very rewarding and most beneficial to organizations that are looking to improve their performance, business results and invest the training dollars wisely.
If you’re interested in learning more about the impact your training is having on your bottom line, give us a call today!