Learning & Development for SMEs - Part 6

Learning & Development for SMEs - Part 6 - Business Impact

Evaluate

The 2015 CIPD learning and development survey highlighted that one in seven organisations do not evaluate the majority of their L&D initiatives – over a third limit their evaluations to the satisfaction of those that take part. One in five assess the transfer of learning into the workplace and a small minority evaluate the wider impact on the business.

It’s important to learn how to create and implement an effective training evaluation strategy to fit and drive your training and performance initiatives, whether formal or informal, so that you can help to create and demonstrate the organisational value of your work. An effective strategy will ensure that your valuable, limited resources are dedicated to the programs and solutions that will bring about the most impact.

Developing criteria that measure success against business goals

Review each role in the business and identify the critical success factors for each role, build competency frameworks from this data.

Business goals can then be assigned to each role/department and measurable goals can be developed from there. These are the base criterion upon which the evaluations should be based.

If there is no evidenced benefit achieved from the training, why was it undertaken. As the sayings go, “Start with the end in mind” and “If it doesn’t get measured, it doesn’t get done.”

Report

Each department and each manager ill require detailed information on the learning activities their team is undertaking. The level and type of information may differ for each management level, so you should develop easy to understand dashboards and reports.

Review

Learning and development is not a static one-time event, it’s organic and changes as requirements change.

A good practitioner will review the reports to determine whether the goals and outcomes were met and the business goals achieved.

Improve

Take the lessons learned from the evaluation process and redevelop the content as required.

If you would like to read the eBook on which these blogs are based please go to An SMEs Guide to L&D for your free copy.

Les Heath

Senior L&D Strategy Implementation Specialist

07847 540 536

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