New Year, New Training
A new year is approaching and with it comes new ideas for improvement. In organizations, these improvements often involve some form of employee training. Employee training commonly requires costly investments that will pay off in the long run — but how will you know they were effective?
At this point, your organization has [hopefully] conducted a needs assessment to determine whether or not training is actually needed. Once training is deemed necessary, it is important to identify how it will be evaluated. Unfortunately, the time and resources are often so focused on getting the training off the ground that they often fail to consider how the effectiveness of the training will be measured.
Donald Kirkpatrick first published his model for evaluating training programs in 1959. His model involves four levels in evaluating a training program:
1. Initial Reaction: This involves surveying participants to gauge how they felt about the training program. If people don’t value the training or like the format, there is little hope for knowledge retention.
2. Learning: This is obviously what you hope happens as a result of the training program. But how will you know learning occurred? There are many ways to assess learning but the important point is that you need to have both pre- and post- measures. If you don’t already have baseline measures, now is the time to collect them.
3. Behavior: Measuring behavior change after a training program is important to separate from the learning itself. An individual could have learned, but then not be able to apply the new knowledge or skills in their jobs because of organizational constraints. If this is the case, the training program itself may be effective, but maybe the participants or other organizational factors need to change. Behavioral change can be measured through direct observation or 360 feedback surveys.
4. Results: This level refers to the organizational outcomes you hoped the training would affect. This is essentially the “why” you implemented the training. This is often the most commonly evaluated level — however, if you only look at this level and neglect the previous three, you might miss important information as to why or why not your training was effective.
With all of the planning, resources, and politics involved with getting a new training program off the ground, no one wants to think that it might not be effective. But, that is no reason not to evaluate your training. Kirkpatrick’s model will enable you to pinpoint at what level changes need to be made to ensure your training makes an impact.
