The success and effectiveness of a training team can be measured in a number of different ways.
Traditionally, Management used statistics such as revenue generated, number of people trained and feedback to measure the success of training.
In this article, I explain the pitfalls of each of these methods and provide an alternative way to measure the value of training.
Revenue
If your team charges for it’s training services then of course revenue is an important indicator of success. However, you can’t simply say “we generated £X this month aren’t we doing well”. As with any industry, there has to be a target against which revenue can be measured.
Statistics
Try to avoid measuring value by looking at statistics such as the number of people trained, the number of courses delivered or the number of attendees per course. There are so many variables that contribute to these statistics.
For example, I work for an in-house training team. The number of people that we have trained during the last quarter of 2012 is much higher compared to the same period in 2011. Does that mean the team is more successful now? No, it means that we are in the middle of a company-wide SharePoint rollout and demand for training is incredibly high.
These kind of stats smack of “I need to justify the existence of my team”.
Feedback
In my team we are measured against 4 KPI’s – whether course objectives were achieved, the application knowledge of the Trainer, training skills and overall course rating. These 4 KPI’s are combined together for each course using a “magic formula” and the result is compared to a pre-defined target.
The problem with using feedback to measure the success is that it is too subjective and relies heavily on too many outside influences.
Performance
Training is not about the Trainer. It’s not about how many “excellent’s” we received from the delegates. It’s not about how many people we’ve trained or how much revenue we’ve generated.
Training is about improving performance. It’s about improving confidence. It’s about saving time, increasing productivity and reducing the number of calls to the Help Desk. If you can quantify these factors, you’ve got the measure of success.