Do You Need to Measure Training Effectiveness?

The majority of companies do not measure training effectiveness. While it seems absurd in a $100+ billion dollar industry, it is true.

For example, we have designed and delivered over 17,000 learning solutions. For almost every one we have measured satisfaction, job relevance, and knowledge gain. Yet we have only measured on-the-job adoption, performance improvement, and business impact about 800 times.

That is less than 1%. This drives some of us crazy.

Shouldn’t all business investments impact business results? And shouldn’t learning and development professionals measure the impact that they are having on performance and the business.

Yes and No.

Changing human behavior, improving performance, and impacting business results take time, commitment, effort, and resources. If you are contemplating measuring the impact of training make sure that:

1. It Matters: To make sense, the desired performance improvements must be important (compared to other priorities) to the business, the participant’s boss, and the participant themselves. If you do not have buy-in at all three levels, do not waste your time measuring and reinforcing the initiative. In fact, we would recommend skipping the program all together to invest in a higher priority project.
   
   
2. There are Clear Success Metrics: To effectively measure training adoption and impact you must have distinct performance metrics at both the individual and company level. Without a clear gauge of current and desired performance along with the value of closing the gap, it is hard to measure (or justify) training effectiveness.
   
   
3. You Treat it as a Change Initiative: Training events are used to create awareness and insight while showing that you care about career development. You hope participants are satisfied and get a few “Ah Ha’s.” Behavior change and performance improvement are a whole different ballgame. They require a longer term approach, systemic reinforcement, and performance coaching.

Bottom-line. If you need to move a business metric, make training measurement a key component of your strategy. It is a powerful tool to drive accountability and provide feedback for performance coaching. On the other hand, if you are creating awareness and just “checking the box” to show that you invest in your employees, don’t waste your time looking for performance improvements or business results that we can tell you from experience will not occur.