Category: Training Adoption
Not every participant will adopt his or her goals. The question is what is an acceptable percentage of those who adopt? That is what the adoption rate attempts to do. It is the percentage of participants that we want to perform the work (Adoptive Behaviors) and is the prediction of successful transfer from training to the workplace. The Steering Committee needs to answer this question for each Intention Goal: What percentage of participants with this Intention Goal will successfully perform the Adoptive Behavior?
Action Planning enables learners to identify significant aspects of the content, which they intend to apply in the work place in order to improve their level of performance. A well-designed action plan also provides guidelines to ensure the action items are written in performance terms, are do-able, and will make a significant impact. Action planning enhances the likelihood of transfer, and also provides a baseline for transfer evaluation after 2-3 months.
At the end of each course, every participant is walked through an action-planning exercise in which they demonstrate how they will apply the skills and knowledge acquired in the course. Consider using industry-specific situations and real-world goals in structuring these course action plans in order to best match the participants’ training to their job challenges. Thorough and thoughtful coverage of action planning means your employees are ready to hit the ground running once training has been completed.
Many business leaders define the ultimate financial goal of a firm as “to maximize shareholder wealth” or “the creation of shareholder wealth.” Both terms may be used interchangeably but essentially the goal is to have the price of its stock as high as possible. In order for a company’s stock to grow in value you must have profitable growth.
Profitable growth means that a company’s profit grows at a greater rate than revenue. This however might be difficult to achieve over a long period of time. At the minimum, companies try to make sure that their profit is growing at the same rate as their revenue.
Profitable growth begins with the growth in a company’s revenue or “top line” but that is not enough. What a company really aims at is growth in profits or “bottom line growth.” It is the growth in profits that investors seek from a company in order to be willing to buy its shares, thus creating demand for the shares and increasing their price.
Whenever we perform training evaluations, whether as an external consultant or as an employee, we need to follow the standards for evaluation as laid out by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. I was lucky enough to be an adjunct committee member in the early 90s and have done my best to apply these standards throughout the years.
Having done so many training evaluations (externally and as an employee) I have concluded that there are seven principles in conjunction with the standards, which I use to guide successful evaluations. I am glad to share then with you – enjoy.