Measuring Business Impact – The Holy Grail of Training Assessment?

One of the perennial issues facing the training industry is the extent to which one is truly able to measure business impact. Often, at an intuitive level, one can be confident that a programme is delivering excellent results. But a more detailed assessment is challenging in practice, particularly where it is a necessary part of securing further resources.

Some of the basics are reasonably painless. It is relatively easy for example, to measure the extent to which skills are being adopted during the training; it is also reasonably straightforward to assess the extent to which these skills are being used back in the workplace. But is the investment producing something that is truly tangible in terms of business impact? And even if tangible results are being achieved, are these a direct consequence of the training, or are other factors responsible? Perhaps more importantly, could even better results be achieved?

These imponderables can be frustrating for everyone involved. Those who invest in training have been promised value and they want to see if it is being delivered. If it isn’t, they want to drill into the reasons why, so they can ensure action is taken to realise the anticipated value. The scenario is similarly frustrating for the trainer, or the training company, because they have promised to deliver value and they want to be able to demonstrate that they’re being successful in doing so. If they aren’t demonstrating value, they want to take action to ensure that they do, helping their client and preserving the relationship at the same time.

Many of our clients have developed their own measurement systems and we have been happy to work within such frameworks. The difficulty for the client is that these can be very labour intensive and in many cases they are creating a measurement system from scratch. This, of course, is very demanding, particularly in today’s environment when resources may be scarce.

Some training companies also offer their own measurement and assessment. But I know that some clients have concerns about these – after all the training company is under pressure to show value and there may be a temptation, even unconsciously, to look for evidence of success – and that can be at odds with being truly objective.

We at AchieveGlobal wanted to find a solution, which was truly objective; hence, our recent partnership with Knowledge Advisors. They are specialists in this complex, labyrinthine field and can develop robust and highly credible tools to lead you out of the measurement maze. Moreover, they have considerable experience and resource, so their processes, from a client point of view, are extremely straightforward.

We are hopeful that this alliance puts us a considerable step ahead in the quest for effective evaluation. Feel free to share your own experiences of measurement and let us know if you have found your own Holy Grail.

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director