Examining organizational results is often the toughest, but also the most important, evaluation for your organization. We don’t spend time and money on training because it sounds like a good idea. Organizations spend time and money on training to improve results, such as improving sales numbers or reducing errors. You might also receive training to help you save time or frustration with your daily tasks.
How Can You Evaluate Results?
Depending on what you learned in training, this can be tough to measure. The easiest results to track are those that leave some sort of electronic trail and can be quantified. For example, if you are trying to reduce data entry errors, management should be able to create reports that show if data entry errors in your department have dropped. If they have, your training was effective at getting the results you and your organization wanted.
If errors don’t budge or go up, something has gone wrong. This doesn’t guarantee the problem was with the training or you. If you had other changes happening in the workplace at the same time or management issues, one of these things could also be the culprit. But, the results tell you that a change is still needed somewhere to get the desired results.
Often training programs need to be supported by other interventions to see results. The following is a list of assessment questions you can ask:
- Does staff have all of the information and resources they need to perform?
- How often is specific feedback being provided?
- Is the workplace designed to support the desired performance?
- Does staff have the ability and responsibility to perform?
The Bottom Line
In the end, even if evaluation is at times a challenge, your organization should still want to examine your results. Training is time intensive and costly. Organizations shouldn’t waste money, resources and employee time on poor training that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.
