Evaluating Training Impact

The importance of evaluating training impact is something we can all agree on.

When planning learning initiatives for your business, there is an expectation from the business for the people participating in the training to have gained improved skills and productivity, demonstrate behavior change and in general, place into action the lessons delivered.

However, many times we don’t begin with the end in mind. Meaning we develop a learning initiative without a plan as to how we are going to evaluate training impact to ensure business value. Because of this, we try to back into it after the program has been in place. However, if we didn’t develop the program with our mind’s eye on determining the business impact, there’s no hope of assessing after the fact.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the Kirkpatrick Model for evaluating training success.

University of Wisconsin Professor Donald Kirkpatrick developed the Kirkpatrick Evaluation Model for evaluating training. It’s a 4-level approach and is one of the most successful models that can help you measure the effectiveness of learning programs.

For the upcoming Coffee Chat, I’d like to discuss the implementation of levels 3 and 4 to determine training impact.

Level 3: Behavior (Assessing Performance on the Job). Can the person do the “task” the training was based on; smarter, better, faster than they could before they participated in the training?

Level 4: Business Results. This goes beyond productivity on the job. In level 3 we are assessing job skill improvement, level 4 we are assessing if the learning made an impact on the business.

• Did sales increase?
• Did employee engagement scores go up?
• Did safety incidents go down?
• Did retention numbers go up?

Assessing Impact Tool

So how do we begin with the end in mind? And once the time comes to assess impact, how are we doing so? To give us a jump start, Michelle Ockers of the Emerging Stronger team (comprised of yours truly, Michelle, and Laura Overton) developed a tool for our publishing partners Go1 to help assess training impact.

Download the tool here.

I look forward to the conversation on Friday, August 19, to learn your processes for assessing learning impact.

Can’t be there live? We’ve got your back! 

Simply by registering to attend the coffee chat you will receive:

 A follow-up email with resources and extra goodies

Copy of the video and audio recording

 Copy of the chatbox transcription