Ensuring a return on your Training Investment

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Ensuring a Return on your Training Investment

By
Thomas D. Conkright, Ph.D.

Conducting an audit of your training programs has never been more important. Here, a noted consultant tells you how to go about it—and why.

*Reprinted by permission from RESOURCE, a periodical of the Life Office Management Association, Atlanta, Georgia.

There is increasing pressure on all division and departments to account for their performance and contribution to the success of a business. Marketing and sales must attract, sell and retain customers. Data processing must provide more information in easier-to-retrieve-and-use formats. And training must show that the programs it offers truly increase employee performance.

Performance is the issue—that is, greater productivity and improved results, with fewer costs—and training is a critical part of overall business performance. Effective training assures that your most expensive resource becomes and remains skilled and knowledgeable in the face of change. It makes your workforce more flexible, responsive and empowered.

Training is a capital investment. You use scare dollars to invest in new skills and knowledge just as you invest in new equipment, software or facilities. And, just like any other investment decision, you want to know whether or not you are getting a return. In the past, training was a benefit. You sent high performers away from the office for a good part of a week and they listened during the day and enjoyed the evenings. Those days are gone. In today’s business climate, your employees had better come home prepared to do something better.

Getting a Grip

Many companies don’t have a real handle on what training is occurring. This is partly due to the fact that individual professionals, departments, and managers make local decisions about whom to send to what courses. How many different supervisory skills courses have your employees taken? Have they all taught the same approach, based on a management philosophy that’s consistent with your overall corporate direction and culture?

Don’t know? Then you need to find out. You need to assess the current state of training in your company. I prefer to call this an audit. It is the same kind of analysis or assessment you periodically make of your accounting function, because the U.S. government says you must. It is similar to the analysis you probably have made of your product offerings, because you want to ensure that you have the right mix of products and that you’re presenting them in the marketplace properly.

To collect information about existing programs, we use a simple form (see below). We usually find a lot of information about some of the programs, but major gaps in most. The good news is that a training audit forms the basis for:

Laying out a full curriculum plan.

Setting up better data collection and coordination processes.

Determining where additional training is needed.

A good curriculum plan is not a catalog of courses. Rather, it is a meaningful progression of experiences that assures the participant becomes a fully-qualified performer in a particular topic or discipline.

Collecting good data—especially cost and impact information—needs to be planned in advance. It is nearly impossible to find the details once an instructor has packed up and moved on to the next course. With enough advance planning, you can determine the financial value of a training program and prepare to measure the return. Self-paced materials, especially multimedia, need extra administrative and management attention.

Finding Answers

The identified gaps in existing training programs is where the distinction between a performance analysis and the more traditional training needs analysis becomes crucial. The worst thing line-of-business professionals can say to a ‘90s trainer is that they have a performance problem—too many mistakes in claims processing, for instance—and therefore need a training course. It may be that the problem lies in the forms, the computer software, or a host of other possible issues. Only when viewed in its entirety can the role of training be determined. The Information Systems Technology Training department at Nationwide Mutual has taken this approach to heart (reported separately in this issue).

Mager and Pipe use a set of questions to help guide this form of analysis:

I think I’ve got a training problem?

Is it important?

Is it a skill deficiency?

They couldn’t do it if their lives depended on it.

Could they do it in the past?

Is the skill used often?

Is there a simpler solution?

Do they have what it takes?

They could do it if they wanted to.

Is desired performance punishing?

Is nonperformance rewarding?

Does performing really matter to them?

Are there obstacles to performing?

If you determine that there really is reason to offer training, then you start the detail work. This may involve a job task analysis to determine what is really done, the criticality of tasks, and how difficult they are to learn. You should make media decisions about using distance learning, job aids, multimedia or classroom instruction. You must analyze the financial impact—that is, determine if the training will be a good investment. Finally, you must discover if there already are existing courses that could do the job and recommend a make/buy decision.

If you decide to develop the training in-house, with or without a consultant, the process must be systematic. You carefully develop the products your company sells, testing them as you go. Likewise, you must be careful not to throw together your training. You need your best content people as well as instructional designers who can structure training content for maximum learning in the shortest possible time.

Finally, you want to build an assessment process into each training program. Kirkpatrick (1967) identified four levels:

Did the participants like the experience?

Did the participants acquire new knowledge or skills?

Were the participants able to transfer this learning to the job and maintain the learning over time?

Did the business or work group benefit from the training?

At this point, you’ve come full circle. You’ve built a training program systematically—based on corporate strategy and job requirements—implemented it, and assessed the results. When you go back to the evaluation checklist, you answer each item in a strong, positive manner, with no information gaps.

In times of tight budgets, the training function often is curtailed as much or more than other business functions. It would be suicidal to suggest a massive analysis, planning and development effort under such circumstances. If performance is the issue, however, and your training department has moved with you into the ‘90s, it would be inconsistent for your business not to demand the kind of analysis and accountability discussed here.

20 Questions

To ensure the effectiveness of your training programs, we suggest using a training program evaluation checklist. Was the program:

Tied to corporate strategy?

Based on actual job tasks?

Developed by qualified course development personnel?

Developed using a systematic development methodology?

Complete (all course materials available)?

Implemented with all trainee materials available?

Implemented using fully functioning and current equipment?

Implemented in facilities that are supportive of good learning—quiet, clean, easy to get to?

Instructed, facilitated or administered by content-qualified personnel?

Instructed or facilitated by personnel qualified in presentation techniques?

Presented to participants who met prerequisites (fit the target audience)?

Did you:

Evaluate the instructors, materials, and facilities?

Give participants sufficient advance notice and preparation time?

Record direct costs?

Record indirect costs?

Meet cost guidelines?

Collect participant’s reactions to the training experience?

Assess participant learning?

Assess whether learning was transferred to the job?

Assess whether the program contributed to improved company performance?

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