New Zealand, 2006

1. Is Your Training Program
Effective?
Phil Garing, Managing Director
Lisa Galarneau, eLearning Solutions Director

2. What we’ll cover…
• What does ‘effective’ mean?
• Are you setting the right goals?
• Are you mapping business and training
strategy?
• Are you delivering the right way?
• Are you getting a ROI?
• Steps in the right direction

3. What does ‘effective’ training
mean?
• Makes the organisation
more productive
• Changes behaviour/shifts
perspective
• Involves employees in the
process of learning,
respects their time and
helps them understand
how their learning
contributes to the
organisation
• Makes demonstrable
improvements to the
bottom line

4. What does ‘effective’ mean? (cont.)
• Ineffective programs leave trainees bored,
uninspired and frustrated
• They can be superfluous – informal
learning may take precedence
• Show little or no return on investment
• Result in no measurable organisational
change

5. Have you heard:
I know my training program is effective because…”
• “we rolled out 25 new training modules in one month”
• “1024 trainees attended the course”
• “646 trainees completed the course”
• “234 trainees completed assessments”
• “trainees said they enjoyed the course”
• “we saved $24,240 in travel expenses
• “I finished the project on time and on budget”
• “no one complained”

6. Are you setting the right goals?
• Must be explicit about the goals and process of
accountability
• Learning should be the focus, not training
– Application of learning should be the goal
– Learning means changed behaviour
• Creating a culture of learning and knowledge
sharing
• The benefits of a good ‘employer brand’
• Training program should support business
strategies

7. Are you aligning training with
strategy?
• Doing the wrong thing efficiently does not help
• Organisational objectives are often unhooked
from training design
– Knowledge management, but ‘discrete’ resources
– Organisational change, but same learning
• So:
– Identify the resources you want people to use
– Articulate the behaviours you want
– Design training around them

8. Are You Delivering the Best Way?
• Are you selecting the
best mix of resources
for your learners?
• Are you ensuring that
training is relevant?
• Are you setting
context for your
learners and helping
them to understand
the big picture?

9. From Strategy to Return:
Measuring ROI
Why not ROC?
• Good training takes an investment
• Results (change) often take time
• It involves more than just $
A cost-driven focus
• May drive down the quality of the learning experience
• Probably won’t recognise the true returns over time:
a spiral of contraction

10. The Theory
• Measure the investment
• Measure the return
• Provides a static measure of ROI
• Improve the learning process
• Measure the improvement

11. For example:
• Add up the delivery costs • The number of people
• How much time has training • Time spent training
saved? • Travel cost
• Calculate the salary saving • Facilities and technology
• Compare to delivery cost costs
• Compare to remote
delivery costs
Fasttrack Consulting, U.K. Centra.com

12. Real Measurement

13. Indicators
Training Delivery Learning Changed Business
behaviour Indicators
• Training time • Completion rate
• Training cost • Pass rate • Organisational • Productivity
Page clicks culture • Customer
• Travel expenses •
• Enterprise satisfaction
• Reduced
skills • Employee
downtime
• Motivation turnover
• Strength of • Wastage
brand

14. Measurement

15. Quantitative or Qualitative?
Quantitative Qualitative
• Easier to measure • Often intangible
• Can be converted to $ • Results get ‘contaminated’
• Can be automated • Anecdotal results seem less
• Often measures training, not reliable
learning
•
• More likely to measure learning
Inputs focused
• Outputs focused

16. Getting useful information
Some Principles:
• If the information isn’t useful, don’t bother gathering it
• Ensure you have a real benchmark
• Measure the change you are seeking to achieve
• Look for:
– Subjective analysis
– Longitudinal information
– Anecdotal value

17. Approaching Projects
Some practice:
• Pilot projects to measure results
• Approach projects iteratively
• Look for the most bang for your bucks
(focused change)

18. Steps in the Right Direction
• Addressing training as a strategic activity
• Aligning the entire organisation behind one
strategy (including training department,
management, HR, IT, etc.)
• Using an educational design process
– Learner profile analysis
– Best mix of resources
– Looking at the overall lifecycle of learning

19. In Conclusion
• Training cannot occur in a vacuum, nor
can a training department operate in one
• Delivery of training doesn’t mean people
are learning and that the learning is
carried back into the organisation
• Employees want to learn: make it relevant,
practical, engaging, and help them
understand why it matters