Guidelines for carrying out a training evaluation
Investment in staff skill development has been rising year after year. Just as important is being able to judge how well this training works. A large percentage of remote training has replaced in-person learning practices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying rise in remote work. There has thus never been a more pressing need to assess the efficacy of training.
What steps can you take to guarantee that you’re evaluating training effectively?
The methodical process of analyzing a training program’s impacts and determining its efficacy is called training evaluation. A training program can also benefit from this type of feedback. Additionally, it determines if a training program achieves its intended goals.
The following is a sample of a training evaluation that could be used in the workplace. Imagine you’re a software firm that has just released their product’s 2.0 edition. Implementing a training program is the best way to make sure that all of your engineers and IT staff are up to speed on the new product. A comprehensive training review would consider the program’s performance, learning requirements, influence on the company, ROI, and business demands as a whole.
The purpose of doing a training evaluation is to provide management with all the necessary data regarding the effectiveness, ineffectiveness, and areas for future improvement. In addition, it should show whether the training program was worth the investment.
What is the significance of training evaluation?
Due to the need for new skills in the industry, training evaluation has become much more important in the past year. We no longer do business in the same old way, thanks to the rise of remote work and the corresponding increase in the demand for digital skills. Therefore, it is essential for firms to have the ability to cultivate these abilities within. Furthermore, it is crucial to evaluate training for the reasons mentioned below:
- Improving business output: Research has demonstrated that well-executed training programs lead to higher output from staff members. The result is a positive correlation between corporate success and employee output. The more competent an employee is, the more their performance and happiness on the job grow, like a domino effect. In the end, this improves staff engagement, which in turn boosts company performance.
- Better employee success also means happier customers and clients: When employees feel like they have the right skills, they are more likely to be engaged in their work. The majority of businesses (79%) with engaged workers gave their customers a far better experience than those without, according to research from the Temkin Group. If workers are enthusiastic about their work, they are more inclined to go above and beyond.
- Improving your training program: Evaluation helps you pinpoint your training program’s strengths and areas for development. It paints a more complete picture of the peak training moments, the most productive learning and teaching approaches, and more. As a result, it can figure out how to contribute to feedback loops that lead to better training content—content that is both more intuitive and tailored to the individual—and ultimately, better business results.
- Raise the return on investment (ROI) of your training: Expenditure on training is astronomical, as mentioned earlier. Since this is the case, it is critical to demonstrate a high ROI. Making sure there is a direct correlation between training and company success requires evaluation. It also aids in making better business decisions, including developing a training program or exploring other options, like consulting or freelance work. An excellent return on investment (ROI) also has a domino effect, making workers more creative and boosting their productivity.
- Encouraging participation from workers: Promoting learning opportunities is a major factor in employees’ decisions to remain or leave an organization. In a similar vein, it affects employee engagement directly. To find out if your training is engaging your staff, it’s important to evaluate it.
Employees are more inclined to remain with a company if they see room for advancement, which improves retention rates. Therefore, to increase job satisfaction, decrease stress, and increase employee tenure, it is necessary to design and deliver training that addresses employees’ demands.
Put simply, an effective training development process revolves around training evaluation. It is also an essential part of the ADDIE paradigm and other frameworks for instructional design.
Model of training evaluation
The Phillips V-model, sometimes called the Phillips ROI model, is a useful and effective tool for assessing training. It is based on the Kirkpatrick model, which Jack Phillips created. Consequently, familiarity with the Kirkpatrick model is important.
While Kirkpatrick’s approach only includes four levels of evaluation, Phillips’ model has five. Return on investment (ROI) is the fifth level that Phillips introduced. This statistic is very helpful for HR directors in convincing decision-makers of the significance of training.
The five stages of training evaluation for the Phillips V-model are as follows:
Stage 1: Response
The first step of the model is to assess how the participants felt about the training they had previously completed. Conducting a survey after a training session is the method most often used. Still more methods include pulse surveys (pop-ups), artificial intelligence (AI) to decipher emotional responses, suggestion boxes, and review sites; employees often report feeling “over surveyed” using these methods. Gathering data for review is what this step is for.
Stage 2: Acquiring Knowledge
The purpose of this is to determine whether any learning occurred. Another way of looking at it is that it’s a fantastic tool for checking attendance and concentration levels as well as the program’s learning objectives. A pre- and post-test can help with this. It would be wise to do an evaluation both before and after the training program to gauge the participants’ progress toward the goal of learning a new programming language.
Stage 3: Putting It All Together
At this point, the Phillips V-model looks for signs that the issue is in the implementation or the application of the learned material. For illustration’s sake, suppose level 2 data showed the training was unsuccessful; in this case, level 3 could figure out why there was no application or implementation. For example, if the staff had a good grasp of Python but couldn’t put it to use due to software constraints, the solution would be for the company to purchase more robust software.
Stage 4: Effects
The Phillips V-model examines the overall effect of the training on the company at level four. Not only does it take into account organizational issues that can impede the efficient implementation of the skills learned during training, but it also assigns impact to the training’s effectiveness. It also considers additional factors and the extent to which they affect training efficacy.
Take door-to-door sales training as an example. Imagine you were in charge of a program to teach sales representatives this talent. The spread of the COVID-19 virus has rendered your sales agents unable to knock on clients’ doors. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that the inability to put into practice the newly acquired abilities during the training is a major barrier to their effective application.
Stage 5: An Analysis of ROI
In this respect, the Phillips V-model differs from its Kirkpatrick counterpart. It is a way to find out how much money the training was worth. The Phillips V-model employs particular metrics and statistics to provide a close perspective on the relationship between training and business performance, even if there is no direct way to do so.
A cost-benefit analysis of a training program, for instance, can reveal whether or not the expenditure on training was worthwhile. Is it possible to quantify the outcomes? A smart investment would be $50,000 spent training sales agents to sell an organization’s products online if doing so yielded a net profit of $500,000. In this example, training clearly pays off.
It goes without saying that you should also think about things that are unique to your program and organization.
Four-step training evaluation
We will examine the practical implementation of the Phillips-V model now that you have grasped its theoretical foundations.
- Find out which training evaluation level is appropriate.
In most cases, the Phillips V-model will not assess your training efforts over all five levels. All that effort would have been for nothing. According to research, just around 5% of training programs undergo evaluations up to level 5.
Consider a two-year program for senior leadership development; you’d need to assess it using all five dimensions. The reason behind this is that it possesses a great level of impact, complexity, and value.
You can’t, for instance, assess a training program that helps three workers come up with a fresh approach to responding to emails from customers.
According to Phillips, it is best to start by analyzing each learning project on the first level, and then choose which tiers of the training program require evaluation depending on priority and necessity. If you think it’s necessary to assess knowledge up to level 3, for instance, you could stop there. Your budget and the needs of your company should inform your decision as to which level to measure.
- Choose and mix the tools you’ll use to evaluate your training.
You can choose a training evaluation tool after you’ve decided on the level of evaluation you want to do. Any number of tools or a mix of approaches will do the trick. If you want an unbiased and complete picture of the training program, it’s best to gather quantitative and qualitative data.
You will be able to have more insight into the training experience by combining the strategies.
The degree of evaluation, your budget, and your needs will determine which instrument, if any, you should utilize.
- Take a look at all the metrics
To get to relevant conclusions and establish the results of a training program, you need to combine and analyze data from numerous sources. A meaningful representation of the data is necessary for its interpretation. Making a report with accompanying charts and comments could be one way to achieve this. It may also entail gathering textual and video analysis.
It is critical to collect data in an unbiased manner and clean it up before analyzing it. Be sure to review it for accuracy and produce it without any preconceived goals. After all, decision-making will require data visualization, so give some thought to it.
- Share the results
You have the option to share the findings with important parties, including both employees and management. In order to demonstrate the effect (or lack thereof) of the training on the organization’s performance, it is essential to link your results to business objectives. In order to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of the training, it is essential to use level 5 of the Phillips V-model.
In conclusion
If you want to know if your training is effective, you need to evaluate it. Your company may boost training efficacy and, by extension, performance, by familiarizing itself with various models and methods for evaluating training and then using the most appropriate ones.
