BUSI 444 Week 5 Discussion Board Forum 3 Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Training Evaluation

BUSI 444 Human Resource Development, Discussion Board Forum 3 Thread and Reply

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At the end of most training sessions, participants fill out a short survey asking whether they enjoyed the course, whether the trainer was clear and whether the room was comfortable. These surveys are easy to collect, and many organizations stop there. I want to argue that they cannot tell an organization whether training worked.

Noe (2020) describes several kinds of training outcomes: reactions, or how trainees felt about the training; learning, or the knowledge and skills they gained; behavior, or whether they use the skills on the job; and results, or the payoff for the organization. Each answers a different question, and only the later ones show whether the training changed performance.

The research shows that reactions are a poor substitute for the others. Pooling studies that measured several training outcomes at once, Alliger et al. (1997) found that trainees' reactions, especially general measures of whether they liked the training, were only weakly related to how much they learned and to how they later behaved on the job. Reactions that asked how useful the training was showed somewhat stronger links. A course people enjoy may teach little, and a demanding course may teach a great deal.

A better plan measures several outcomes and includes a comparison. Suppose a company trains its first-line supervisors in giving feedback. It could test supervisors' knowledge of the feedback model before and after the course, ask their employees to rate how often supervisors give specific feedback before the course and three months later, and track results such as employee turnover in supervisors' teams. Training half the supervisors first and the other half a quarter later would create a comparison group, so the company could tell whether changes came from the training or from other events. Noe (2020) describes this kind of design as a way to rule out alternative explanations.

None of this requires an elaborate research budget. It requires deciding, before training begins, what success would look like and how it will be measured.

Results matter most to leaders, but they are also the hardest to link to training, because so many other things affect turnover, sales or quality. That is why the comparison group is worth the small delay it causes. When the first group of supervisors shows lower turnover than the second group over the same quarter, the company has evidence it can present with confidence, and when it does not, the company learns that the course needs work before it is offered again.

Reply to Jamie

Jamie, you suggested dropping reaction surveys entirely because they only measure whether people had a good time, and I agree that many organizations rely on them far too much. I would keep them, though, in a different form.

Sitzmann et al. (2008) combined the research on how trainees react to programs and found that reactions were related to trainees' motivation, self-efficacy and post-training intentions, but only modestly related to learning outcomes, and that they should not be treated as a substitute for measuring learning. Reactions still carry useful information: they can reveal whether trainees saw the training as relevant and whether something about the delivery got in the way.

The key is to ask better questions. Instead of asking whether participants enjoyed the course, a survey can ask whether they expect to use specific skills in the next month, which parts felt least relevant to their jobs and what might stop them from applying what they learned. Noe (2020) notes that such information helps designers improve programs. Those answers can then be checked against the behavior measures you proposed. A short follow-up also gives trainees a nudge to use what they learned, since being asked about it is a reminder. Over several programs, the company could compare follow-up answers with supervisors' observations and learn which reaction questions best predict real change, keeping those and dropping the rest. Keeping the survey to five or six questions would also respect participants' time and raise response rates, which makes the answers more representative of the whole group. Would your company be willing to add a short follow-up survey a month after training as well?

References

Alliger, G. M., Tannenbaum, S. I., Bennett, W., Jr., Traver, H., & Shotland, A. (1997). A meta-analysis of the relations among training criteria. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 341-358. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1997.tb00911.x

Noe, R. A. (2020). Employee training and development (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Sitzmann, T., Brown, K. G., Casper, W. J., Ely, K., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2008). A review and meta-analysis of the nomological network of trainee reactions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 280-295. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.2.280