When should you evaluate employee training?

Whole-heartedly agree. This is helpful especially during technological changes, policy changes, regulatory changes, or other change mechanisms where it is imperative to ensure that the employees understand the changes and the significance of the changes as to how it affects their job, their responsibilities, and the overall company, or industry. By measuring the level of understanding of your employees, you can then determine how in depth the training needs to be. You now know where to best direct the training resources and if there is a group which may need more training than the rest. Not everyone learns at the same speed or in the same way. More specialized training may become necessary.

I agree with this and would add the the line manager briefing, setting expectations before the training is equally important... It scene sets and explains what should be seen after the training

Whenever and however people are evaluating their leadership development programmes they're still not really working. According to HBR, 66% of participants report no sustained change or personal benefit from their experience, which is a global waste of app. $266billion per annum (pre-covid); so, perhaps the most significant challenge in evaluation is the people providing them being able to see beyond their egos and happy-sheets. They also need to see beyond the need to simply validate and justify the ever-increasing use of technology and short virtual sessions in behavioural development, and regain their objectivity.

I agree... With one caviate...the training must be fit for purpose from the 1st day of delivery... Too often companies run a pilot course or adapt and change the course as it rolls out... This shouldn't be necessary if the course, in whatever format, was quality checked before it was delivered... Why should the first people completing the training not get the best experience... By accepting that a course may need adapting we accept that first delegates are Guinea pigs... They are not...

Ongoing learner engagement and satisfaction are key. Not only should you make entertaining and interesting trainings at a difficulty level appropriate to your learners, you should assess the impact of your training as an ongoing, continuous process.

There should be 3 set times for evaluation.. Immediately after the training...3 months after to see if benefits are being materialised and after a year to see if they are sustaining

All phases are important for evaluating training, but after training provides the most impact. You can ask the employee what they thought of the training to gain insight. Not only does this impact the current employee, but also future employees. You can see what went right, and what can be improved on.

After training assessment is the often underutilized assessment. Once the employee leaves the training we tend to forget to follow up even one week after, let alone 3 months, or a year after the training. As David M. pointed out, the importance of these 3 evaluations are absolutely critical. One reason we tend to train and forget is that we talk about 'behavior change', which has a negative connotation, rather than 'can the employee apply the training to the job?' which has a neutral connotation against the employee, all while the assessment of application can be seen as a benefit to business unit productivity.

Personally I prefer the modified ADDIE model. Like the standard model, you Analyze, Design, Develop and Implement, but instead of evaluating at the end, you evaluate continuously throughout all steps.

After the employee has completed training, review the ROE (Return on Expectation) against the outcome (O). If the O equals the expectation (E) then the ROI (return on investment was successful This is the RBO (return by outcome). As an example: If you were teaching someone how to drive and the lesson was on how to back into a parking space the E is, “After the lesson the student driver will be able to successfully back into a parking space.” If, at the end of the lesson the student driver can back into a space then the O equals the E and the ROI (I) was a positive investment. O = E — +I If, at the end of the lesson they cannot back into a space then the O does not equal the E and the I was a negative investment. O = E — - I

How *not* to evaluate: With certain types of training, especially compliance training, it's a good idea to carefully analyze which evaluation questions you will pose, rather than automatically use a method or model. For instance, I once saw a harassment prevention training evaluation ask, "How will you do things differently in the future?" While this can be a great question for assessing learning in many types of courses, it's a potentially disastrous one - for legal and other reasons - when it comes to anti-harassment training or other compliance training.

The true answer to this prompt is 'continuously.' As a practitioner you should continuously be evaluating and iterating on training programs.

I thought I would write my thoughts on this whole article here instead of doing it in sections. Pre-training should involve making sure what you are about to train on is relevant to your audience and is a topic that you can see is sorely needed that needs to be reviewed with your team. After your presentation, you need to evaluate how you did and how you can do it better. Was your audience engaged? did I sound too monotone, etc.? I would not waste time with a survey, unless the audience is too large because I think one-on-one is much better. If it is medium-sized and you work with your audience, you might want to talk to a handful of them personally to get their ideas. Then, follow up with them later to see how the training helped them.

RBO is a simple assessment to determine if the employee can apply what they learned. Many of us have probably been conducting training assessments using a less formalized form of RBO for some time, though the simple formula, definition, and abbreviation RBO, for the training industry, was not developed until 2019. Since the formulas above and term RBO were developed by me, it is well past time I write some longer form articles and e-books on the topic. In the next few months I will post articles, e-books, and links on the topic of RBO.

Employee evaluation should not be a once-a-year event but a continuous, dynamic process aligned with the organization's goals. Ongoing assessments ensure that evaluations are based on actual performance and tangible contributions to business objectives, rather than sporadic snapshots. This approach allows for real-time feedback, enabling employees to adjust and improve their performance continuously. By focusing on actual results and achievements, evaluations become more objective and relevant, fostering a culture of accountability and growth. Regular, constructive feedback is crucial in this process, as it guides employees in the right direction and helps them understand how their work impacts the broader business goals.