Employee Training Evaluation

Ultimate level-
The ultimate value of training to the organization is judged mainly in terms of financial improvement. This may be the cost effectiveness study but gathering all the data for cost and the effectiveness is difficult because of different assumptions made to collect data. But the overall improvement in the financial condition of the organization could be attributed to the training effectively transferred on the job.

Williams defines evaluation as the assessment of value or worth. He observes, value is a rather vague concept, and this has contributed to the different interpretations of the term evaluation.
Rackham offers perhaps the most amusing and least academic definition of evaluation, referring to it as a form of training

Evaluation after a year showed the results such as, positive movement in the profitability, reduction in the recruitment of technical staff, introduction of new training programs.
II) For organizational effectiveness, Peter Bramley uses following criteria-
(a) Achieving organizational targets,
(b) Attracting resources,
(c) Satisfying interested parties
(d) Streamlining internal processes.

Researches by American Society of Training & Development (ASTD) disclosed that the actual practice of evaluation did not often follow the strict recommendations of evaluation literature. Most of the training managers who participated in ASTD research efforts believed that the concerned efforts should be made to increase the practice of employee training evaluation.
Other theorists have also suggested models which are similar to Donald Kirkpatrick‘s but rather different approach was suggested by Warr, Bird & Rackham. They also suggested four levels the first letter of each level forms an acronym CIRO. i.e.
1) Context evaluation,
2) Input evaluation,
3) Reaction evaluation,
4) Outcome

Kirkpatrick‘s goal was to measure the participants‘ reaction to the programme, the amount of learning that took place, the extent of behavior change after participants returned to their jobs, and any final results from a change in behavior achieved by participants after they returned to work. From Kirkpatrick‘s doctoral research, the concept of the four Kirkpatrick measurement levels of evaluation emerged. While writing an article about training in 1959, Kirkpatrick referred to these four measurement levels as the four steps of a training evaluation. It is unclear even to Kirkpatrick how these four steps became known as the Kirkpatrick Model, but this description persists today (Kirkpatrick, 1998). As reported in the literature, this model is most frequently applied to either educational or technical