30 July Eliminating Cost Center (...roof cave in....?)

[Paul Terlemezian]

Recently I had a consulting engagement where the client indicated that every Friday they were offering a "mandatory" training session on new products for the sales force. The sessions were poorly attended (in spite of being mandatory) and there was frustration from the people who were investing their important time and skills to prepare and deliver the content.

 

I asked if they were able to track any correlation between participation and performance? Were the attendees performing better than the non-attendees. The answer was that they were not tracking performance.

 

I then asked if they could guess (via anecdotal evidence or "savvy") if there was a difference. Their best guess was that there was no difference in performance.

 

I then asked why they were offering the session - "crickets" - and soon after the sessions were discontinued.

 

What does it cost us to do level 1 evaluations of a course? Are we gaining value? Would we be better off if the instructor or LMS prepared its own level 1 assessment and then asked for a response from participants? Would the trends over time bring valuable insights?

 

What meaningful changes have occurred in your training activities because of level 1 evaluations?