Training is often about conveying knowledge from one person or group to another, and that is reflected in the evaluation techniques often used when training—for example, written tests to discern the amount of knowledge retained.
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But these methods may miss the mark, because acquiring information is only a part of training employees. In fact, it’s only a means to an end—the end being a change in behavior.
A company benefits greatly when employees who become well-versed in correct processes, procedures, values, and missions change their old behaviors based on this new information.
Measuring Effectiveness
A great example of this can be seen in training efforts around unconscious bias. Companies often express frustration that money and time spent on diversity, inclusion, and unconscious bias training doesn’t seem to be effective. But “effective” is a bit nuanced.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences conducted and evaluated a “field experiment at a global organization testing whether a brief science-based online diversity training can change attitudes and behaviors toward women in the workplace.”
Essentially, the results found that the training was effective at increasing awareness of issues around unconscious bias toward women in the workplace, but it did little to change actual behaviors among many participants.
The Importance of Reinforcement
In order to change behavior, training should be accompanied by some form of reinforcement for putting the knowledge gained in training into practice.
For example, a company might recognize an employee who demonstrates adherence to a newly taught process or a manager who uses newly learned communication skills to help resolve a conflict on his or her team. Or, a manager might review a staff member’s pattern of turning in work late within the context of recent training on time management.
The key is to draw a concrete link for employees between their behavior and the consequences of that behavior and how the knowledge they have been learning in training has or could have contributed to those consequences by modifying that behavior.
Much of the process of evaluation of employee training focuses on measuring the amount of information retained as opposed to the impact of the training on actual behavior.
While knowledge retention is important, it’s really employee behavior that organizations should be seeking to modify. Creating a link between behaviors, results, and training should be a key part of any training program.