After many years of conducting impact studies with tens of thousands
of trainees, I came to one rather conspicuous conclusion – you can’t measure
the true effectiveness of training until you know what the climate is
like. And you can’t figure out what the
right climate is like until you know how to measure training impact. Because the effectiveness of training cannot
be measured in a vacuum, without also evaluating the climate that influences
that effectiveness, I’ve added what I call a Level 6 “transfer climate” to the
traditional five levels of evaluation.
While the 5 traditional levels are critical to any evaluation
strategy, they don’t give you the full picture of training success or
failure. Nor do they tell the most
important and dynamic part of the story.
That is, they only provide a static report indicating whether training
“worked” or didn’t work in the past tense, but don’t make any suggestions or
recommendations on why or how to maximize that impact and make the same
training more successful in the future.
Additionally, a Level 6 can explain the variability of training
effectiveness across the organization.
It arms you as the training professional with a critical narrative for
your business clients – why does training work for Mary and not for Joe? By uncovering and explaining this type of
variability in training effectiveness, you are able to inform your business
partners what THEY can do different as business leaders to drive and maximize
their own training dollars. They are the
ones that can create and drive the right “transfer climates” for Mary and Joe
back on the job. After all, leaders
spend a lot of money putting their employees through training - isn’t it only
fair that we give them some control over the outcome?
In all my years of presenting Level 1 to 6 evaluation results, I have
yet to encounter a business group that does not find the results about their
transfer climate the most interesting and informative piece of the
presentation. When I tell my audience
I’m giving them Level 1 to 5 results for their training, of course they’re
excited - less than 4% of all companies are doing it and even less do it
right. But when I tell them I’m also
giving them Level 6 results to explain why training succeeds or fails back on
the job, that’s what really gets them to the edge of their seats. Imagine being able to say to your business
partners, “We understand this training was more effective for some employees
than others, we know why it was more effective, and this is what you can do to
make it more effective in the future.”
Now what business leader wouldn’t be happy with that little tidbit?
Welcome to Level 6.
