Are you facing tight budgets, limited resources, and organizational demands to deliver more products or services with less people? While at the same time you see gaps in performance that need to be closed? So how do you go about delivering real results through effective training?
The solution lies in a simple process described by Donald Kirkpatrick in his book Evaluating Training Programs The Four Levels. As a former training and development manager for a Fortune 500 company, this resource was extremely valuable. This helped the organization rethink how training should be designed. The focus shifted to delivering measurable results by using four different ways to evaluate training that had a positive impact on the bottom line.
Level 1 Reaction. Were the participants pleased with the workshop? Reaction is defined as what the participants thought of the particular program including materials, facilitators, facilities, and content. This helps assure against decisions made based on comments of a very few satisfied or disgruntled participants.
Level 2 Learning. What did the participants learn in the program? The level of evaluation is concerned with measuring the learning of principles, facts, techniques, and skills presented in a program. The measures are intended to be objective, based on exercises, tests, practices, and job simulations. These are normally stated at the beginning of the training session.
Level 3 Behavior. Did the participants change their behavior based on what was learned? This refers to the measurement of the job behavior. Evaluations may include before and after comparisons, observations by the supervisor or manager of the participant, subordinates, or peers, statistical comparisons, or long-range follow-up.
Level 4 Results. Did the new behavior have a positive impact on the organization? Evaluations at this level are used to relate program results to organizational improvement such as cost savings, work output, and quality changes. This often includes data collection before and after training.
We often see skills training evaluated at Level 1 Reaction and Level 2 Learning. However if you are concerned with a return on investment with a limited budget, some thought should be given to Level 3 Behavior and Level 4 Results.
A smart approach is to take time to think about what needs to be accomplished. Time spent identifying training needs must include input from supervisors and managers. What is current employee behavior and how might that detract from achieving critical organizational goals? How is behavior observed or documented? How is feedback provided to employees? Are periodic performance reviews a standard practice?
A more advanced stage is Level 4. Again the identification of training needs must be linked to the organizational culture, mission statement, strategic and tactical goals. Here training is focused on producing measurable cost savings, observable increases in output, and customer driven improvement in quality.
The four levels of training evaluation are legitimate tools to help realize a true return on investment of the training dollars spent in an organization. What better way to help the operations side of the organization than by tying training directly to the achievement of critical measurable organizational goals?
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