Krishna, nice post. Couldn’t agree more.
I see this as an opportunity for those in the training and development business to differentiate themselves by making it easy for all HR functions to evaluate training impact.

How? Specify clearly both the learning and performance outcomes, and suggest key metrics that should be influenced (sales, supervisor satisfaction, customer satisfaction, safety records etc etc).

Provide users with a model (and where possible measures) for assessing the following:

1. satisfaction and learning
2. behavior change(s) back at work
3. individual and group performance
4. Return on investment

Trainers that help organizations do this will demonstrate their commitment to value creation and partnering in ways that their competitors do not – differentiation is one key to victory!

James – thanks for commenting.

The whole area of evaluation of training and development has been a bit of a sore thumb for decades.

I am constantly coming across the issue of organisations questioning the ROI of training and development and not using standard methodology even before they have a programme take place.

Adoption of best practice in this area is definitely not common place.

I’m also suggesting that we as individuals attending such programmes need to consider the ROI.

As we know the ‘happy sheets’ at the end of a programme/workshop are just a temperature check at that time.

If we are encouraging people to take accountability for their own career and development, perhaps we should be asking them to take joint accountability for ensuring they get a ROI of the programmes they attend?

Radical perhaps – but logical I think?

Thanks again for adding your comments to this important area for boosting productivity, performance and profits.

The saying ‘you get what you pay for’ springs to mind.

I’ve just spent the weekend at a Barcamp, and I achieved my purposes of making lots of contacts in Southern Germany where I now work, exposing myself to a completely ‘German’ event, and learning a little more about local differences.

BUT, I realistically had low expectations about how much I would learn from such a ‘free’ event, compared to one with a ticket price which has more thought and preparation given to quality and targeting of content.

I do think that there is a market and a role for both ‘free’ and ‘premium’, and that the former is not always less valuable than the latter. But people are short-selling themselves if they view the two equally.

It worries me how many businesses believe they can thrive on training and advice provided for FREE.

It seems that far too often when it comes to training. it’s a case of knowing the price but not the value.

Hi Krishna,

It’s an interesting point. Businesses will happily invest thousands in bringing in outside expertise in the form of consultants but baulk at the idea of €100 to train a member of staff in the same field.

No doubt the number of free workshops available leads to a change in the perceived value of paid events. If you’re used to receiving training for free you set the bar much higher for paid events.

We run frequent, ‘Marketing 101′ style workshops and the biggest impact on the ‘value for money’ question is usually the size of the workshop. The larger the workshop the less each individual feels they got personal attention – which, to be fair, is usually true. With that in mind we tend to limit workshop sizes to no more than 12-15 participants.

Of course, small workshops are not always feasible – especially when you are the speaker and not the organiser.

With bigger groups, the one thing we try to do is paint that longer term picture both at the beginning and end of every presentation – ‘this is how your business will be affected if you implement x, y and z’. We also tend to prepare more takeaways and followup resources for paid events than funded ones.

From an attendees standpoint I agree that we need to look at the ROI from training in a different light. I often look at training along similar lines to having a gym membership – you feel you’re doing the right thing by having one, but how often do you put it into practice?

The gym membership is only poor value when you fail to make use of it. Perhaps we should all take our mental ‘gym going’ a little more seriously.

@Ronna – Barcamps and unconferences are terrific and I support the approach with programmes like PodCamp Ireland which I help organise. I am not sure that people have delineated ‘free’ from ‘fee’ though in their mind as we all are becoming more demanding on what we expect in terms of ‘value for money’ or ‘value for our time’.

@John – I agree people are looking for free, quick and easy answers – access to a world of education via Google has probably contributed to this for us all.

@Mark – yes there is something about personal attention versus a large group and what the perception of value is there in terms of one on one time – I guess a bit like public and private sector schools where people are prepared to pay for individual attention and smaller class sizes and then expect superior results. Interesting thought – I’m not sure that too many people market their programmes in this way though – certainly not in my experience.

Thanks everyone to contributing to the debate and sharing your perspectives and experiences.

[...] If that isn’t inflation busting, I don’t know what is! Krishna also writes on her blog about assessing the value of training. Another of our members Clickstream (who recently revamped their own website) also attended this [...]

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