BUSI 750 Week 7 Discussion Board Forum 4 Example

Discussion Board Forum 4: Thread and Two Replies

BUSI 750 Managing Human Resources, Discussion Board Forum 4 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the insurer and the classmates are composites standing in for the course's own; the books and the published research are real; the week, points and readings follow Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 750, which keeps the forum's own instructions inside the course.

Our chief financial officer asked a fair question at the budget review: the leadership academy costs about $540,000 a year for 90 newly promoted managers, so what does the company get for it? Our answer so far has been satisfaction scores, which average 4.6 out of 5, and attendance, which is close to perfect. Neither tells the CFO whether the managers lead differently or whether their teams perform better. This forum asks how a strategic HRD leader shows that development is worth its cost, and I want to answer for our academy.

Kirkpatrick's framework remains the common language. In the version Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) present, evaluation has four levels, running from how participants react, through what they learn and whether they act differently at work, to the results the organization sees. We evaluate only the first. When Arthur et al. (2003) pooled studies of organizational training, they found average effects of medium to large size at every level, but they also found that the training method, the skill trained and the evaluation criterion chosen all shaped the size of those effects. In other words, what we measure affects what we conclude.

The best recent evidence on leadership programs is encouraging. Across 335 independent samples, Lacerenza et al. (2017) estimated positive effects of leadership programs on all four of Kirkpatrick's criteria, and the biggest gain appeared in transfer, the use of trained behaviors back at work (a corrected effect of .82, against .63 for reactions). They also identified conditions under which programs worked better: a needs analysis before design, feedback, several delivery methods in which practice features prominently, sessions spaced over time rather than massed together, on-site delivery and face-to-face formats that are not self-administered. The research does not tell us that our academy works; it tells us what a working academy tends to look like and how to check ours. Our program, three consecutive days at a resort with lectures in the mornings, misses several of those conditions.

My proposal has two parts. First, redesign the academy along the lines the meta-analysis supports: a needs analysis with senior leaders, six half-day sessions spread over four months, practice of real conversations with feedback from trained observers, and sessions held at our offices. Second, evaluate it with a design that can isolate what the academy itself changed. We promote about 90 managers a year in two waves. If the spring cohort attends in its first months and the fall cohort attends a semester later, the fall cohort can serve as a comparison group during the spring cohort's training period. A design that can tell the program's effect apart from everything else changing in the company is what the CFO is really asking for. We would measure behavior with a short 180-degree survey of each manager by their direct reports and their own supervisor before and six months after the program, and results with team voluntary turnover, absenteeism and claim cycle times, which our managers influence directly.

Finally, I would be careful with return on investment. Phillips-style ROI calculations convert results into dollars and subtract costs, which the CFO will appreciate, but they depend on assumptions about how much of a change the program caused. Mello (2015) emphasizes that HR measures should connect to strategy; for an insurer whose strategy rests on retaining experienced adjusters, a credible drop in turnover on trained managers' teams is more persuasive than a large ROI figure built on guesses. I would report the comparison results first and offer ROI as a range with its assumptions stated.

Reply to Olivia

Olivia, your manufacturing plant's forklift safety program has something many programs lack, a results measure the plant already tracks: recordable incidents. You reported that incidents fell by a third in the year after the training. Before the plant credits the program, I would ask what else changed that year. If the plant also added pedestrian lanes or replaced older trucks, the incident drop could reflect those changes. Arthur et al. (2003) showed how much conclusions depend on the evaluation criterion, and the same is true of the comparison. A stronger test is available inside the plant. Could you compare the trained shifts with shifts trained later, as I proposed for our managers, or compare your plant with a sister plant that did not run the program that year?

Reply to Nathan

Nathan, your sales coaching program is a good test of Lacerenza et al. (2017), even though it is not formally leadership training, because coaching sales managers is a leadership skill. Your description shows that the program is delivered as recorded videos that managers watch on their own. The meta-analysis found that self-administered formats were associated with weaker effects than face-to-face delivery with practice and feedback. That may explain why your sales managers rate the videos well but their reps report no change in coaching. Could you pilot a version in which managers watch one video and then practice a coaching conversation with a peer while a trained observer gives feedback, and compare their reps' ratings with those of managers who only watched? Even a pilot with ten managers in each group would tell you whether practice and feedback, the ingredients the review found most useful, are what your program is missing.

References

Arthur, W., Jr., Bennett, W., Jr., Edens, P. S., & Bell, S. T. (2003). Effectiveness of training in organizations: A meta-analysis of design and evaluation features. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(2), 234-245. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.2.234

Kirkpatrick, J. D., & Kirkpatrick, W. K. (2016). Kirkpatrick's four levels of training evaluation. ATD Press.

Lacerenza, C. N., Reyes, D. L., Marlow, S. L., Joseph, D. L., & Salas, E. (2017). Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(12), 1686-1718. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000241

Mello, J. A. (2015). Strategic human resource management (4th ed.). Cengage Learning.