Training and development has gone right up the agenda for forward-thinking organisations that want to develop competitive advantage, grow market share or even just improve their image and reputation. But, asks Cliff Lansley, when it comes to evaluating the need for training and what it actually delivers, have we been trying to see in the dark for far too long?
If our aim is to design and deliver affective training and development programmes we can learn a lesson or two from the education system. The writing is clearly on the 'white board' that we need to move away from rigid structures that look at knowledge transfer, knowledge retention and the ability to recall facts. It has been a painful journey for our schools, and successive governments have wrestled with the best ways to educate and evaluate, but only now are they starting to consider the needs of the individual.
Not only is the school's focus on the class being shifted to individuals, but the emphasis is now also switching to wider development beyond the 'three Rs' to give children more 'life-like' learning experiences and the softer skills that we all need. Commercial training is learning these lessons and now looking at broader development and how the needs of the individual are key.
If you take stock of the way that the evaluation of training and learning has changed in the last 60 years you will find that we have all concentrated on just a few models - principally Leslie Rae's Training Feedback Questionnaire, Donald Kirkpatrick's book 'Evaluating Training Programmes' and Bloom's 'Taxonomy'. My objective isn't to dismiss the great work, research and impact of these models, afterall, they have encouraged training and development to progress. What I want to say is that things have got to move forward again and now, thankfully, they are.
In May 2007 the CIPD launched its paper and a tool for training evaluation as a way of engaging everybody involved in developing, delivering, participating in, and evaluating learning and training, titled 'The Value of Learning: A New Model of Value and Evaluation'. In straightforward terms the CIPD's model recommends an 'inclusive' process of evaluation that involves all stakeholders. It talks of moving away from a culture of 'happy sheets' where training feedback questionnaires are skewed to provide positive information. It suggests they are binned and we start to look seriously at the follow-up and ongoing analysis of training instead. Part of that follow-up should be one-to-one feedback and coaching, when appropriate.
I believe you need a baseline assessment of an individual's abilities to identify their training needs and relate this to the organisation's objectives. Understandably organisations want to know their return on investment (ROI) from training and the baseline assessment will establish the need for training and make sure that resources are directed where they will have most impact and return.
Questionnaires, interviews and focus groups, feedback and performance reviews, one-to-one discussions, coaching and self-reporting by the learner all have a role to play in effective evaluation. There are subjective assessment methods like Myers Briggs or 16PF and objective methods like MAP Assessment that are useful in establishing the training needs and then measuring improvement after personal development plans are actioned.
The value of the evaluation of training has been 'undervalued' and the pressure continues to mount to introduce training and development only where it is going to make a tangible difference to a business. The hard end evaluation will show if the training has made a positive impact on people and organisations, it may reduce costs, grow markets and revenues and improve customer experience. On the softer side it will encourage people to take responsibility for their own continuous improvement, and promote individual and group engagement with training and development.
I think that the lights are going on when it comes to the proposition that evaluating training and development starting with individual and group assessments is crucial. It's essential to the establishment of any training need, developing the training that will be most effective (outcomes and costs) and then being able to go back to see if things have moved forwards.
Cliff Lansley is the managing director of DPG plc and MAP Assessment. To find out more about DPG and their management assessment tool go to www.map-assessment.co.uk
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