5 Responses

1. KPI/KPO
   Hi Beth

   These are just some ideas that sprung to mind.

   Get the trainees to fill out a post training questionnaire KPI/KPO could be a 90% satisfaction rate?.

   A KPO/KPI could be to create a training library.

   A KPO/KPI could be to reduce outside training costs by 20% in first year.

   Another could be to set up bitesize learning sessions ie 1 or 2 hours for a number of weeks as oppossed to trainees taking one whole day out of a department.

   How about creating a company training brochure.

   Create a proposal for identifying training needs.

   Hope this helps.

   Damian Burcher
   Vision Sales Services
   http://www.visionsales.co.uk

2. Training KPI
   Beth
   Here are some you could consider
   Volumes – delivered against demand ie 90%
   Trainer contact time (days in class)ie 200 days
   Wait time to access training ie 4 weeks
   These would suggest a business orientation to your KPI’s, you might want a more resource based view such as room usage, students trained, etc.
   Quality standards could aslo be addressed such as trainer monitoring targets, etc.

3. If the training is effective the KPI will be obvious.
   Beth
   A reason that you are finding it difficult is that the training function is not often tied in to the bottom line.
   If it was it would be easy to to produce a KPI related to the change in bottom line performance after a particular training regime.
   This is where the difficulty lies, measuring the real performance effect of any particular initiative.
   Perhaps it would be more appropriate to apply a KPI that does relate to a measured change in performance, and then find a training programme that was effective in changing that KPI.
   Perhaps your difficulty in finding a real KPI that is affected by training is not the fault of the KPI.
   Could it be the fault of the training programme itself which is ineffective.
   Find an effective training programme and the KPI will be obvious.

4. Accountabilities?
   A well-constructed and written job description or role profile will include accountabilities – I don’t mean a section headed ‘accountabilities’ – I mean a list of measures which in extremis, if you fail to achieve, you could be taken to task for. Unfortunately these tend to get written as responsibilities.

   Assuming you haven’t got a well-contructed job description (and few in my experience have) then I would suggest balanced score card approach, and I don’t mean Kaplan & Norton’s actual score card, I mean the principle.

   I’m guessing a training manager has to provide training, so some measures about the provision of training, perhaps around price/delivery/speed/quality and customer satisfaction (the customer is the one paying the bill, not necessarily the one attending!).

   I guess the training manager has a team, so some opportunities there for some people-centric measures, such as currency, capabilities etc, progress to their own development plans and so on.

   On the process side you could have some measures around the effectiveness and efficiency of your booking process, commisioning process, purchasing from 3rd parties etc, and also your evaluation processes.

   Finally, but not lastly, some business or finance measures – how much value you and your team have added to the bottom line compared to your wages and operating costs.

   A useful rule of thumb: don’t worry about outputs, focus on outcomes – looking for an effective training programme to point the way to a useful KPI might work, but why not turn this on it’s head – what is a KPI that really matters to the organisation, or key customers? Find that, and see what you can do through training to make it improve – in doing so you will have created an effective training programme (assuming your trainers are ok!).

   For some specifics on measures take a look at my evaluation articles in the Useful stuff section of http://www.trainerbase.co.uk or look in Paul Kearns’ evaluation section here on trainingzone.

5. design your own meaningful measures
   Performance measurement is where I specialise. I find that people often go fishing or shopping for performance measures that are ‘out there, used by others’. But the really useful training related performance measures are those that relate directly to your organisation’s training strategy. Here’s a little technique I use a lot to design this kind of performance measure:

   1) list the 4 to 7 most important differences that the training manager would directly make to the organisation if they were doing exactly what the organisation needed (e.g. a higher proportion of the training that people are doing is directly relevant to our organisation’s strategic capability gaps of leadership and project management)

   2) for each of the differences you listed in step 1, make each one very sensory specific, that is, describe them in language that relates to what people would see, hear, feel and be doing if those differences were actually happening (e.g. when people take training, they choose training courses that will give them skills to be better leaders or project managers)

   3) for each of the differences you made sensory specific in step 2, use your sensory specific descriptions to list potential things you could count to let you know the extent or degree to which that difference is actually happening (e.g. the percentage of total person training hours attending approved courses in leadership or project management)

   4) finally, of the potential things you could count for each difference, select the most feasible and objective counts as your measure(s)

   If you’d like more information, feel welcomed to contact me!