The Winning Teams Blog

Evaluation as a tool to improve performance

The CIPD reports that most L&D practitioners expect that in the next five years there will be greater emphasis on monitoring, measurement, and evaluation of learning and development effectiveness (see The Future of Learning and Development ). Although there is still debate about the most suitable way to measure and evaluate L&D effectiveness, its importance is now widely recognised, even if it not currently widely practised.

Dr Stephen J. Gill points out (The Performance Improvement Blog - Getting Results From Employee Training: All You Have To Do Is Ask) that the evaluation process “isn’t tangential; it is central to the training and learning process”. I agree with him, since as he points out, that without it: you don’t know what your staff do and don’t know; you don’t know how to improve performance; and you don’t know the value of the intervention.

This is sound advice, but many performance improvement consultants are reluctant to agree to include a formal evaluation process as part of their performance intervention, since they believe that the success of the intervention lies largely outside of their hands – with the performers, and with their managers. They also may believe that many of the benefits are not easily and immediately quantifiable.

Whilst both of these arguments can be countered, I think that there is another way of looking at this. In her book ‘Beyond Transfer of Training – Engaging Systems to Improve Performance’, Mary Broad advances the argument that the evaluation process itself is not only a tool to measure performance (which we know is essential), but is actually a tool that can be used to support and improve performance. To quote her: “The old saying holds true: ‘You don’t get what you expect, you get what you inspect.”

By placing emphasis on a formal evaluation process, you are sending signals to staff and managers that you are expecting a certain set of behaviours and actions as a result of the intervention, and that you expect to get the desired results. That is a very powerful message, and is a very different one to asking if they enjoyed the learning experience.

If you don’t insist on a formal evaluation system, you are over-looking a very valuable weapon in the performance improvement arsenal.

The Future of Learning and Development

The CIPD’s 2008 Learning and Development Survey – now in its 10th year - provides data on current and emerging trends and issues in learning and development. In this post, I’ll review some of the findings on current and future learning and development practices.

Changes in L&D over the last two years

When asked what the most important changes were in L&D over the last two years, 72% of the respondents indicated that it had been the ‘introduction of new programmes to develop the role of line managers’. This was a clear winner by a 10% margin. This reflects the increasing responsibility for learning and development now placed on line managers, and reinforces earlier findings. (This should be compared to an almost static position on instructor-led training, with 49% saying that it has stayed the same.)

Later on in the report, we find that the majority of line managers are now involved in determining learning and development needs (86%), and half of the respondents (49%) predicted that line managers will have even greater responsibility for learning and development over the next five years.

The second change that respondents listed was that organisations are now placing a greater emphasis on developing a learning and development culture (62%). This reflects a growing understanding that continuous learning is critical to building and sustaining a competitive workforce.

Other changes to learning and development practices over the last two years included: the introduction/extension of coaching programmes; the extension of e-learning; and new approaches to monitoring learning and development effectiveness.

Effectiveness of Learning and Development Practices

When asked to identify the most effective learning and development practices, the top three were:

• in-house development programmes (55%),
• coaching by line-managers (53%), and
• on-the-job training (43%).

Only a fifth of respondents (20%) believed that instructor-led training was effective. This reflects a general shift away from the more formal instructor-led approach as a result of learner preferences, and organisational requirements. Today’s learning and development practices are more tailored to the individual; there is a greater emphasis on learning through projects; and there is increased value seen in learning with and from peers.

The least effective practices were the use of training videos – only 1% found these to be useful - and very surprisingly, only 7% believed that e-learning was effective. (Yet 57% of organisations now use e-learning in some form or another.)

Expected changes in L&D over the next five years

The main changes anticipated in L&D over the next five years include:

• a closer integration of learning and development activity and business strategy (68%), and
• more emphasis on monitoring, measurement, and evaluation of training effectiveness (56%).

Another recent CIPD research project (The value of learning: a new model of value and evaluation) has shown that these two activities are closely linked. ROI measures are of limited interest to senior decision makers, and attention is shifting to ROI to return on expectation measures, which make use of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ information to assess the effectiveness of L&D.

Winning Teams April 08 research roundup

This post contains a summary of research into learning and development, and performance improvement in April 2008. All work is that of the authors, and I have provided links to the original articles.

Learning to lead with a touch of creativity

In this article, the authors discuss the changing nature of leadership. “Traditionally, leaders were valued for their competence, but increasingly they need to be intellectual leaders too, providing the organisation with creativity and analytical strengths,” says the new Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development's (CIPD) chief executive Jackie Orme.

This article appears here on the People Management website.

E-learning stuck in the slow

The CIPD's 2008 learning and development survey revealed that when asked to list the top three most effective training practices, only 7% of 729 learning and development (L&D) managers included e-learning. E-learning is here to stay, but the findings show it still isn't fully appreciated by learners or training managers.

The authors argue further that in order to be effective, e-learning needs to be embedded in wider learning strategies.

The author of the article is Sue Weekes, and the article appears here on Personnel Today.

CIPD - Coaching in organisations

The CIPD have published their initial findings of research into coaching in the UK. The research was launched in April 2007 and will conclude in spring 2008 with the publication of the final research report. This initial report includes: the background to the research; the initial findings; some case studies; and some early conclusions about good practice.

The initial report can be found here.

Coaching: One size doesn’t fit all, new report confirms

Some commentary on the above report appears on Training Zone. The authors conclude that despite the majority of UK employers using coaching within their organisations, coaching to support business goals is still in the early stages, with wide variations in practice. As a result, learning and development practitioners can find it challenging to make judgements about how best to implement coaching within their organisations.

The commentary can be found here.

Where Will All the Talent Come From?

William D. Green, the chairman and CEO of Accenture, and Peter Cheese, the managing director responsible for the Accenture Talent & Organization Performance service line, argue that the war for talent has gone global. “New technologies are transforming the nature of work, the skills demanded, the manner in which work is sourced globally and the ways in which people collaborate to perform processes and innovate. All these trends are making talent an ever-more critical and complex issue.”

They point out that there are several key enterprise learning trends that are important to companies looking to develop and retain their people including:

• Integrating learning with knowledge management
• Using greater variety in learning delivery
• Aligning learning with the business

The article appears here on Accenture’s website.

Education is Vital to Competitiveness

William D. Green, writes in his blog that education is vital to global competitiveness. “The foundation of a competitive company is a competitive workforce … and education is the key enabler of a competitive workforce.”

He suggests that there are three principles underlying competitiveness in education:

• Access: - Providing access to educational opportunities
• Affordability: - Making education a reality by reducing financial barriers
• Accountability: Ensuring that what we are teaching is relevant and delivers good value for money.

Bill Green is the Chairman and CEO of Accenture. The article can be found here.