A training evaluation is successful when the needs of the stakeholders have been met. A stakeholder is anybody directly or indirectly impacted by the evaluation. As a first step, it is important to identify the stakeholders for your evaluation. It is not always easy to identify the stakeholders of an evaluation, particularly those impacted indirectly. Examples of stakeholders for training evaluation are as follows:

• The Head of the Training and Development organization
• Key executives from various business units or staff functions (note: these may be represented by a Steering Committee or other such body)
• Instructional designers, course developers, and instructors (internal or external)
• External training suppliers (to a lesser extent)

Once you understand who the stakeholders are, the next step is to establish their needs. The best way to do this is by conducting stakeholder interviews. The questions that you ask stakeholders can depend on (1) who you are talking to and (2) how they fit into the overall picture. When formulating stakeholder questions, ask yourself the following:

• What do you want to find out?
• How many people can you interview?
• What will you do with the data to help guide the evaluation?
• What is the underlying reason for asking a specific question?

Some questions that you may wish to use with the stakeholders are:

• What business issue(s) is this training going to help in solving?
• Why does this issue exist?
• Why do you want an evaluation?
• What kind of information would you like to see from the evaluation?
• What decisions will you make based on this evaluation information?
• What is your timetable for getting evaluation information?
• How would you like to see it and receive it?
• Who else should I talk to?

Take time during the interviews to draw out the true needs that create real benefits. Often stakeholders talk about needs that aren’t relevant and don’t deliver benefits. These can be recorded and set as a low priority.  Once you have conducted all the stakeholder interviews and have a comprehensive list of needs—is to prioritize them. From the prioritized list, create a set of questions the evaluation will answer.

Previous posts in this series:

Getting Started

Coming up in this series of posts:

• Elements in an Evaluation Plan
• Evaluation deliverables
• Evaluation schedule
• Performing the evaluation
• Training evaluation and continuous improvement
• Training evaluation organizational readiness

As always, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this topic.