A survey covering three markets in South Asia by a consulting firm revealed that after the global downturn most companies are looking to shave expenses and training outfits are getting hot under the collar because companies have slashed their training budgets by over 50% and focusing more on in house development interventions using internal resources.
Training is basically the formal activity that generally occurs in a classroom or elsewhere whereas development is broader. For example, one of the key functions of managers is to develop people. That development may manifest itself in different ways. It may occur through on-the-job coaching, performance appraisals or development planning discussions. Those surveyed also revealed that many managers consider development to be far more effective than the traditional classroom training and were seen as two separate events. Our view is that they go hand in hand.
One should start with development planning, collecting facts and data about a person’s performance, competencies and other related behaviours. Based on this data then a manager should set stretch targets based on the desired performance standards and behaviours. Training then, is an activity or a solution (among others) to address the gap between current and desired performance standards and behaviours.
In the survey we also discovered that most companies do not know how to measure the impact of training. Many companies don’t measure training effectiveness because they find it too difficult to manage. We often refer to Donald Kirkpatrick’s model, which classifies various ways in which you can measure the effectiveness of training. Kirkpatrick identifies four levels.
The first level focuses on attitude. Often we perform this type of evaluation by handing out an evaluation form (happy sheet) at the end of a training programme. From this we can assess how participants felt about the training.
The second way is to measure knowledge or skills acquisition and this is fairly simple. For example, at the end of a Product Knowledge Training Programme we can have people undertake an examination to test their acquisition of knowledge. Similarly, we can use role-plays to assess whether people have developed the required skills during a training programme.
The third level of evaluation really concerns the way that behaviour changes after completing a particular programme. Companies often perform level 1 and 2 measurement but stop there. However, evaluating training effectiveness at level 3 is not as difficult as it may appear. Many companies are now beginning to identify, measure and develop competencies to drive performance standards. They look at people who do well in their jobs and identify and observe the behaviours that they demonstrate, rather than focus on knowledge or skills alone.
In other words, a person may be very knowledgeable and/or skillful, but may not apply the knowledge and skills on the job in the required way. Competencies involve the behaviours, or the application of the knowledge and skills in ways that drive desired levels of performance.
A company we work with trains Sales Managers to observe their sales people in the field. They look specifically at the way that sales people behave when conversing or working with customers and how this differs from the past. They look at the improvements in their behaviour and how that behaviour has changed as a result of the training. Finally, Level 4 evaluation focuses on the rupee impact that the improved behaviours have on the business.
What the recession is telling many managers is that most CEOs saw/see training as just something that the company was providing — training for the sake of training -and have chopped the training budget in the absence of any intellectual debate, it is important from now on to associate a high standard for on the job development, measure the ROI of all training interventions and also promote the idea that people should develop themselves. |
E-mail