Does anyone have some sensible, practical key performance indicators they use to assess the benefits of training?

Measuring The Impact of Training
Training shouldn’t be any more difficult to measure than any other buisness investment. Sometimes though we have to use informed judgement to measure the hard to measure stuff.

Training spend needs to improve business reults so should measure what is important to the business. Business KPIs fall into four buckets: quantity, quality, cost or timeliness. Decide at the outset which one or ones the training intervention will impact and what the improvement needs to be to justify the spend.

You need to set measures to track how you will know whether the quantity, quality, cost or timeliness standard has been met. Numeric measures use numbers to evaluate the result. The numeric measure identifies the units which will be tracked. Agree these with the sponsoring manager and your finance department. Descriptive measures use words to evaluate the result. The descriptive measure identifies who will judge the performance and what factors they will be evaluating.
To create measures for any result, answer these questions,
„h “In general, what do we care about when evaluating this result? (quantity, quality, cost, and/or timeliness)”
„h “How could I measure (quantity, quality, cost, and/or timeliness) ?”
„h “Is there some number or percent I could track?” If the measure is numeric, list the units you will keep track of.
„h If there is no number and the result can only be judged, ask “Who could judge that the result was done well? What factors would they look for?” If the measure is descriptive, identify the judge and list the factors that the judge will look for.

At the individual level it is all very well and good measuring improved competence, but so what if that improvement doesn’t show an acceptable ROI by improving business performance.

Hope this helps.

Richard Bryce
[email protected]

2 Responses

TrainingZone says:

May 22, 2002 at 6:59 pm

This is a difficult one…
It is my opinion that during the training needs analysis, you’ll identify your desired outcomes, including how you intend to measure the effectiveness of the training after it has been delivered.

As providers of bespoke training, we strive to identify real ways for the client to measure the success (or otherwise!), however this can prove difficult.

In fact, depending on the subject matter, this can be very subjective and for this reason some companies don’t even try to measure it.

Where the training is designed to develop or improve an individual in their job role, then their performance post training should be measured and related to their earlier performance.

For me though, the caveat is “what other factors influence performance” and that will vary between and within organisations.

Sorry if this doesn’t help you – I’ll be interested to read other peoples comments.

Kind regards,

Colin Hamilton
email: [email protected]
web: http://www.bis-improve.co.uk
TrainingZone says:

May 23, 2002 at 1:02 pm

Measuring The Impact of Training
Training shouldn’t be any more difficult to measure than any other buisness investment. Sometimes though we have to use informed judgement to measure the hard to measure stuff.

Training spend needs to improve business reults so should measure what is important to the business. Business KPIs fall into four buckets: quantity, quality, cost or timeliness. Decide at the outset which one or ones the training intervention will impact and what the improvement needs to be to justify the spend.

You need to set measures to track how you will know whether the quantity, quality, cost or timeliness standard has been met. Numeric measures use numbers to evaluate the result. The numeric measure identifies the units which will be tracked. Agree these with the sponsoring manager and your finance department. Descriptive measures use words to evaluate the result. The descriptive measure identifies who will judge the performance and what factors they will be evaluating.
To create measures for any result, answer these questions,
„h “In general, what do we care about when evaluating this result? (quantity, quality, cost, and/or timeliness)”
„h “How could I measure (quantity, quality, cost, and/or timeliness) ?”
„h “Is there some number or percent I could track?” If the measure is numeric, list the units you will keep track of.
„h If there is no number and the result can only be judged, ask “Who could judge that the result was done well? What factors would they look for?” If the measure is descriptive, identify the judge and list the factors that the judge will look for.

At the individual level it is all very well and good measuring improved competence, but so what if that improvement doesn’t show an acceptable ROI by improving business performance.

Hope this helps.

Richard Bryce
[email protected]