What Are You Measuring?

[Bill Crose]

A lifetime ago, my training department colleagues and I were satisfied with training data. We cranked out the requested ILT programs plus the "flavor of the year" content, we kept a busy training schedule, and made sure the coffee was always the right temperature. When accused of not delivering effective training because the learners didn't perform as they were trained, we took refuge in our management support role and not ultimately responsible or accountable for LEARNING or productivity. We were simply responsible for TRAINING. At some point, we started calling ourselves the Learning Department and were happy to say we captured & reported learning data. We were proud to report all of our learners achieved passing scores we randomly assigned to tests we gave immediately after training events. We knew learners would forget 50-60% of the content we delivered very quickly but didn't know it was within the first hour of our training events. We knew performance support (PS) was highly effective but it didn't provide the training or learning data we needed to justify a larger budget, so a PS aka workflow learning option was rarely offered. Our clients were never really satisfied with either data types we gave them when they asked us to enumerate the return on their investment. 

It wasn't entirely our fault that we communicated the training department's value in training & learning terms. We knew we needed PERFORMANCE data. Specifically, we needed performance data at process STEP granularity before and after training events and we needed pay rates to accurately translate time savings to money. We simply didn't have a means for capturing that data. The Marketing department had a very expensive system that captured sales data, but they were loathe to share it for obvious reasons. The training/learning/performance department needed its own system for capturing PERFORMANCE data. It couldn't be terribly expensive, it couldn't interrupt workflows, it had to be safe, operate hands-free, and it had to defeat the "Forgetting Curve".

If your business ultimately depends on people who make things with their hands and are still reporting training or learning data, it's time to discuss a mobile workflow learning/performance assurance option. 

[Henry E. Liebling]

I strongly agree that we need performance data at process STEP granularity !!!!!!

Nice piece, Bill