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The Editor

By Debbie Carter (March 2008 Issue)
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The thorny issue of evaluating training never seems to be reconciled – it is always viewed as the part of the job that doesn’t want to be done, but remains key to the success of L&D professionals. So why does measuring the value of learning remain so difficult?

Calculating the return on investment(ROI) of tangible assets like plant and machinery is much easier than trying to measure performance improvement in individuals, where a host of factors other than a training intervention could have been responsible for their progress.

There are a number of tools for measuring the value of training, including Donald Kirkpatrick and Jack Phillips’ ROI methodologies, but despite these techniques, many L&D people simply baulk at the challenge, as Hatty Richmond found out during her recent research into this very problem (see p51). She found that evaluation was still dominated by Kirkpatrick and that practitioners were too concerned about applying it to the process rather the outcome – the actual reason why the learning or training intervention was undertaken.

But, apart from trainers, who cares about ROI in this field? I suspect not many. When Neil Rackham launched his research project into the effectiveness of sales training techniques in the 1970s, little did he realise how long it would take to complete it, because it took so long to get large-scale organisations to commit to the research – implying that they did not feel it was sufficiently important. They wanted the training, but not the longer process of measuring the final outcome.

Last year the CIPD embarked on study called Value and Evaluation: From return on investment to return ld2020on expectation. It was produced in conjunction with the University of Portsmouth Business School and one of its key conclusions was that effective value and evaluation processes require practitioners to develop and use measures that are relevant to organisational stakeholders and the needs of the business. It said that measures of ‘return on expectation’, rather than return on investment, are more likely to meet these needs.

Martyn Sloman, TJ columnist and CIPD advisor, commented at the time of publication: “Trying to measure learning by figures and financial results is a bit like driving with your eyes fixed on the rear view mirror. Return on investment can be a valuable measure in some circumstances, but it is not the answer on its own.”

Given the pace of change in our world today, L&D professionals are going to have to be nimble to keep up with their organisations’ needs. Senior managers and directors will want people able to answer the needs of their organisation very quickly indeed, and the skill set of those tasked with improving people performance must be constantly under review.

So what is the answer to the evaluation problem? Can I suggest that the first issue any L&D professional needs to establish is what counts, and is of value in his organisation – for, if you don’t know what it is and how it feels, you are never going to know if you’ve even got close to it. Get out of your offices and into the business to find out more about how it ticks and what success looks like to your colleagues.

Debbie Carter, Editor

To comment on the editor’s views on evaluation visit www.trainingjournal.com/tj. To find out more about TJ and the Institute of Employment Studies’ ongoing research into the future of L&D visit www.trainingjournal.com/research/ld2020o

 

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