What Stops You From Measuring Training Effectiveness?

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It is the question of ownership. As long as there is ambiguity amongst stakeholders – Learning and Development team, Business, Participant, leaders – regarding who is responsible to measure effectiveness of training provided, the level of learning maturity is highly questionable.

Once the following fundamental questions are answered, the battle is half won and to rationalize the responses and allocate responsibility consider the needs listed below.

Who owns measurement of training effectiveness?
Who owns assessment of training needs in alignment with business needs?
Who owns validating any training request that is raised by business?
Who owns outcomes to be delivered?
Who owns applying learning in real time situation?
Who owns measuring the resource that got trained?
Who owns course correction to be done if training program is not appropriate for a particular resource or project?
Who owns signing off training content?
Who owns signing off learning outcomes?
Who owns signing off business outcomes?

Individual Needs: If an individual was not courteous in writing a mail does not mean he requires training in communication or email etiquettes. It is his state of mind that has to be taken into account to develop a training plan – Is the resource at breaking point due to performance pressure and is venting out in more ways than just one mail, how fair is it push him for communication training while he always believed his communication was above average? Consider the damage being done to his confidence due to his reporting manager’s short sightedness about the situation. A proper assessment means validating training recommendation in various ways including a session with the resource and then proposing a training program to ensure not just his well being but also his productivity. To do that, with whom do we have to sign off the outcomes?

Business Needs: In an outsourcing environment if client requires certified resources from vendor to run a particular process, then training is aimed at certification only. How hard it is to guess who should be responsible for the completion of this entire exercise? The project lead or L and D team? In case a project needs a different skill set and a resource is trained to meet that demand, whose responsibility it is to deliver by the end of the training?

Organization Needs: Based on organization agenda, to achieve a certain amount of preparedness from human capital for the next level of progress, if the leaders mention a few programs based on their experience, market trends and business needs – and L and D rolls osut flagship programs and random training modules without testing the need of the recommendation, who should we measure for effectiveness – The leader, L and D team or the participant?

Depending upon the need, answer the key questions listed above and measuring training effectiveness can become a structured offering for any training institute/ team.



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