“Around the world, companies collectively spend billions of dollars each year on staff training and most companies can quantify that expenditure right down to the last dollar. Many of them can even tell you the number of training hours delivered, the depth and breadth of topics covered and the number of staff trained. However, most of those companies can’t clearly determine how well their staff learned, how much performance actually improved, or what impact the performance improvements had on the business.
Imagine if the marketing department spent substantial sums of money each year but could not really show how their advertising or marketing drives impacted the business. The marketing department offsets each cost with the tangible and intangible benefits the business receives. They measure the reactions, results and impacts to prove those benefits did come to fruition. Next year, when they ask for their marketing budget to be increased, there is a good chance it will be because they have proven how each dollar spent had a quantifiable impact. That same approach can be taken to training and it starts by firstly making sure learning occurs and translates into improved performance.”
Helen McPhun, Employment Today Magazine, New Zealand, April 2011.
Using a robust process that assimilates the work of many including Phillips, Kirkpatrick and Peters, Helen is able to provide evaluation services to any size business or organisation. The evaluation can be done on training programmes, human resource initiatives or any programme that is rolled out in an organisation.
Helen writes about evaluation in NZ and also delivers training through www.learnplus.ac.nz as well as presenting evaluation case studies internationally.
Do you measure the impact to your business of the last training or HR intervention?
