Blog: Training and Development

Evaluation – not everyone’s favorite topic but it is a necessary “evil” especially if we as trainers are running our programs like a business. What do I mean by this? Well with this lovely economic environment we are currently in, we all know that soft-skills training departments are the first to make cuts or lay offs (IT trainers not so much, they have the “techies” and updates to help)…I regress… Managers and CEO’s as we all know look at the bottom-line and if training departments do not produce results then bye bye training department.

We all know about Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels of evaluation right! Well let’s add one more level RETURN ON INVESTMENT or ROI this part of an evaluation program is often left out, not thought of as important or just not done because training departments don’t know how or it’s time consuming – but for what ever reason training departments often leave this critical piece of evaluation out. We should always do an ROI – then when the big guys come and look at our evaluation of training then we can show them that the rate of return was high enough to justify our program. CEO’s and managers understand ROI and can easily see how effective the program is or isn’t and if the ROI is high enough then it the TD is usually safe. Doing the 5 levels rather than 4 levels shows that we as trainers are accountable for a profit or at least a high rate of return on the companies investment. It shows we care to run our departments like a business. We are setting a good example of being responsible for our programs.

Friday I will give some tips on calculating ROI and show how simple it can be…

Remember comments, concerns and questions are always welcome.

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