Evaluating Training

Yesterday, an associate and I delivered a team-building program to some 80+ managers, executives and the leadership team of the Singapore office of a global leader in the digital document managing technology and services industry.

On the ride back from Jewel Box @ Mt Faber to the office, we got into one of our regular philosophical discussions about learning and development and this time we gravitated to the topic of training efficacy.

The conversation reminded me about Kirkpatrick’s Levels of Learning Evaluation.

Donald Kirkpatrick is Professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US and also a past president of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). He is best known for his highly influential model for training evaluation, consisting the four levels of learning evaluation that essentially measure:

1. Reaction of the participant - what they thought and felt about the training
2. Learning - the resulting increase in knowledge or capability
3. Behaviour - extent of behaviour and capability improvement and implementation/application
4. Results - the effects on the business or environment resulting from the trainee's performance

Kirkpatrick's ideas were first published in 1959, in a series of articles in the US Training and Development Journal but are best known from his book entitled, "Evaluating Training Programs", published in 1975.

Most people would be very familiar with level 1 ie the post training questionnaire. Even Level 2, with some form of assessment to test understanding or competency by way of a written, verbal or practical test is also not unusual. This could also take the form of a pre & post training evaluation by the participant (self) or the participant’s supervisor or both.

But it is levels 3 and 4 that most organizations or rather HR/L&D/OD professionals find harder to evaluate and subsequently justify for training dollar investments. For individual contributors, it might be easier, but in today’s complex and matrix organizations, where results arise from project or team collaborations, it would seem that more difficult for organizations to evaluate a particular training or even a series of interventions to the overall business results.

Hence, it is no surprise that a further addition to Kirkpatrick's model has been suggested by Jack J Phillips in the form of a fifth level - Return on Investment (ROI) level, which is essentially about comparing the results (ie fourth level of the standard model) to the overall costs of training.

Only when organizations really invest in the resources to adequately evaluate training at all the 4 or even 5 levels, the question of training efficacy and return on training investment will continue to be a blot that will not go away in the landscape of learning & development.