Training helps bridge performance gap

By Dinesh Weerakkody

At a senior executive forum recently, a CEO asked me to share my experiences of how companies measure the return on investment of their training and development spend. Training is basically the formal activity that generally occurs in a classroom or elsewhere whereas development is broader.

For example, one of the key functions of managers is to develop people. That development may manifest itself in different ways. It may occur through on-the-job coaching, performance appraisals or development planning discussions.

Development and traditional classroom training go hand-in-hand. Before an initiative is planned a company should start with development planning, collect facts and data about a person's performance, competencies and other related behaviour.

Based on the data one should set stretch targets based on the desired performance standards and behaviour. Training then, is an activity or a solution (among others) to address the gap between existing and desired performance standards and behaviour.

Impact

Many companies don't measure training effectiveness and impact because they find it too difficult. We often refer to Donald Kirkpatrick's model, which classifies various ways in which you can measure the effectiveness of training. Kirkpatrick identifies four levels.

The first level focuses on attitude. Often, we perform this type of evaluation by handing out an evaluation form (happy sheet) at the end of a training program. From this we can assess how participants felt about the training.

The second way is to measure knowledge or skills acquisition and this is fairly simple. For example, at the end of a Product Knowledge Training Program we can have people undertake an examination to test their acquisition of knowledge.

Similarly, we can use role-plays to assess whether people have developed the necessary skills during a training program. The third level of evaluation really concerns the way that behaviour changes after completing a particular program.

Companies often perform level 1 and 2 measurement but stop there. However, evaluating training effectiveness at level 3 is not as difficult as it may appear.

Companies are beginning to identify, measure and develop competencies to drive performance standards.

They look at people who do well in their jobs and identify and observe the behaviour that they demonstrate, rather than focus on knowledge or skills alone.

In other words, a person may be very knowledgeable and or skillful, but may not apply the knowledge and skills on the job in the proper way.

Drive performance

That leads us to competencies. General competencies involve the behaviour, or the application of the knowledge and skills in ways that drive desired levels of performance. For example some companies train their sales managers to observe their sales people in the field.

They look specifically at the way that sales people behave when conversing or working with customers and how this differs from the past. They can look at the improvements in their behaviour and how that behaviour has changed as a result of the training.

Training money

Finally, level 4 evaluation focuses on the rupee impact that the improved behaviour has on the business.

However, many companies still rely on traditional lecture-style training and have not built internal capacity to move beyond stage one or two.

Therefore, if companies want to get the best out of their training money they need to set some standards for their intervention, the way in which it should be provided, and the appropriate frequency. Training should not be seen as something that the company was providing because the money had to be spent and, therefore, passed around like a football i.e. training for the sake of training.

In the final analysis, by taking the time to value how different training methods are impacting the business' bottom line, a company would get some insight about the payoff of their training investments and also provide useful signposts to develop effective learning techniques, deliver it effectively and to acknowledge that all skills - no matter how soft - have a clear purpose and will impact business results in a specific way.