Be it an online or a face to face train the trainer program, all of these programs place a lot of importance on the returns on investment from a training program, and measuring the effectivity of these programs. This is vital because training does not end upon delivery. In fact, trainers and the management as a whole need to assess how effectual the training program was in terms of meeting the learning objectives and catering to the organisation’s performance goals. An impactful trainer training program thoroughly explores the different ways in which the effectivity of a training program can be measured. Firms can design their own models for evaluating the training based on their specific criteria. At the same time, there are certain pre-existing models that can be deployed by firms, one of them being ‘The Philips ROI Methodology’. This model has been categorised into important phases, and in this blog, we will be looking into the different stages composing this model.
- Step 1: Develop Objectives of the Project: In order to assess a training’s effectivity, it is important to have a set of clear and feasible objectives, based upon which the degree of success can be measured. Typically, there are five levels of data that must be incorporated into these objectives, namely:
- Reaction objectives or the desired immediate reaction to the program.
- Learning objectives or the expectations for obtaining new information and skills.
- Application objectives or the use of the skills and knowledge procured.
- Impact objectives or the consequences of applying the skills.
- ROI objectives or the monetary benefits generated from the training program.
- Step 2: Develop Evaluation Plans and Baseline Data: It is important to develop and execute a properly organised plan in order to be able to assess the training program after it is over. Usually, this steps involves completing three key documents: data collection plan, ROI analysis plan, and evaluation project plan. Even a face to face train the trainer program you attend would have such a planning phase in place as they would also want to measure their training sessions’ effectivity.
- Step 3: Collect Data During Implementation: This phase involves the gathering of data through the means of various techniques such as interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, or observations. These methods can also be jointly used to procure data about the trainees’ reactions and views on the training program, how helpful it appears, and whether they are facing any challenges.
- Step 4: Collect Data After Project Implementation: This is basically the second round of data collection that takes place after the training program has been completed. Once again, similar data collection methods are used to extract the trainees’ feedback in order to look for scopes of improvements.
- Step 5: Isolate the Effects of the Project: This is one of the most essential steps as not being able to do this will keep the evaluators from actually inferring how effective the training was. However, this might be difficult because some of the outcomes observed may not have been influenced by the training sessions at all.
- Step 6: Convert Data to Monetary Value: As the name indicates, as this stage, the outcomes observed are quantified into numeric figures so that they can be compared against the monetary investments and hence compute the return on investments.
- Step 7: Identify Intangibles: Often, there are outcomes and feedback that are highly implicit, and cannot be quantified into figures. This could be because the data is very subjective or qualitative in nature. Nonetheless, ignoring such outcomes is not a good idea as they may help with the overall judgement of the effectivity of the training program. That said, these data are usually complied into the overall assessment report that is prepared for analysis.
- Step 8: Costs: Every training program requires a set of direct and indirect costs ranging from paying the trainer to renting an infrastructure, and designing the learning material. At the same time, the time invested upon a training session also has an opportunity cost. Therefore, in order to measure the return on investment, a close insight into the related costs is essential.
- Step 9: Calculate ROI: ROI is a financial metric or ratio that is commonly employed to calculate the success of a training program. It simply involves dividing the quantified project benefits with the total training costs in order to measure the proportion of the training costs that have been made up for by the project or training benefits.
The Philips ROI Methodology is a rather comprehensive model as it starts from the very beginning phases of objective creation, and then logically proceed forward to collecting data and then analysis them. There are plenty of other models that can be used, and an impactful trainer training program tends to cover these through the lenses of practical examples to make them more relatable and rational for the learners.
