Training expenditure "linked to business success"

Training expenditure "linked to business success"

Investments in education and training are rapidly increasing, and the returns can be linked to overall business strategy and success.

The 2002 American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) Learning Outcomes Report combines information collected from 1998 to 2001 on benchmarkable measures in workplace training and highlights what has been learned when measuring and valuing these training investments.

From 1998 to 2001, a total of 19,938 courses was evaluated, including 456,000 individual assessments of learning outcomes. The courses covered a wide range of subjects, from basic skills to interpersonal communication to technical processes and procedures, about 30 per cent of which were delivered electronically.

Initial evaluations show that respondents gave the highest ratings to sales and dealer training, new-employee orientation, product-knowledge training and information-technology (IT) skills. The lowest initial evaluations came from participants who attended courses on quality, competition and business practices, basic skills, and occupational safety and compliance.

The report suggests that learners' self-assessment of how much they learned is closely associated with their prediction of the usefulness of what they learned. "Learners' satisfaction with the organization of the content and with the instructor had the strongest influence on the extent to which they thought they would be able to apply the course material to their jobs," said Mark Van Buren, ASTD director of research. "These factors were closely followed by the extent to which the delivery mechanism was effective, the course met its objectives, the materials were useful, and they understood the course objectives."

Across all courses, learners reported that their performance on the objectives of the course rose 36 per cent and their overall job performance rose 31 per cent.

From the learners' perspective, the types of courses producing the greatest gains in terms of course objectives, as well as the greatest increases in overall job performance, were on product knowledge, sales, IT skills, and technical processes and procedures.

The least effective courses, with lower-than-average performance gains on both measures, were on quality, competition and business practices, managerial and supervisory skills, and interpersonal communication.

Supervisors reported that new-employee orientation and product-knowledge courses produced the greatest performance gains on their course objectives, and that product-knowledge courses yielded the greatest improvement in overall job performance.