Why do Organizations Evaluate Training and Development Programs - Iloka Benneth Chiemeli

WHY DO ORGANISATIONS EVALUATE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS

1. Provide feedback on whether the training or development activity is effective in achieving its aims – in this context, the imperfection of trainers as human being is highlighted, thus, organisations evaluate training d development program to see that they money spent in such programs are worthwhile towards achieving the main aim of designing the training and development program. For instance, organisations cannot know how a training program designed to train employees on the importance of teambuilding in an organisation has been effective or if the objectives has been meet without conducting an evaluation program to determine the effectiveness of such triaging program. 

1. Indicate the extent to which trainees apply what they have learned back in the workplace (transfer of training), an issue which many organisations find they have problems with – the main purpose of every training program is to develop needed skills, which the organisation expects trainees to, transfer back into their work. Thus, it can be argued that evaluation of training is essential for organisations to see if the training received has been transferred back to work, and where such are not applicable, the organisation can find suitable solutions towards tackling such issue. An example is that organisations cannot be sure if skills learned from training programs has been successfully transferred into workplace without evaluating the productivity of trainees and comparing them with their previous work rate as a means of determining how effective the skills acquired has been transferred into carrying out day to day activities within the organisation.

1. Provide information on how to increase the effectiveness of current or later development activities – another point highlighted in this context is that organisations evaluate training and development to highlight inefficiencies in previous training program and design new ways to reduce and possibly eliminate such in either the current training program design or in future organisational training programs. For instance, through evaluation of a training program, the organisation can determine how effective the tools used in carrying out such program has been by evaluating the writing system, the training delivering system and the setting of the training environment. These evaluations will be used to design an improved and better training program in future organisational training.  

1. Demonstrate the overall value and worth of development activities – for every penny spent in an organisation, it is necessary to justify that the value is worth the dollar as the main purpose of every organisation can be linked back to profit maximization. Thus, evaluating training program is necessary to determine that the money spent on undertaking the training program has generated a value and worth that are equal or greater to the amount spent on undertaking such program. For instance, if Coca-Cola spend 10 million USD in designing and delivering a training and development program for improving creativity and innovation in their organisational system, it is necessary that an evaluation should be conducted to ensure that the money spent has created enough value in the creativity and innovation stream, sufficient enough to justify that spending 10 million USD on training and development program for improved innovation and creativity in Coca-Cola has been worthwhile.