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In the early 1990s, I worked in the “educational services” department of a very large computer company. We delivered a lot of training to both customers and employees. At the end of each quarter, we would gather for a pep rally, at which time our vice president would discuss our performance.
The key metric was volume: how many programs we delivered, how many people we trained, how many student hours we logged, and how many courses we produced. He also talked about how much revenue we collected (from customers) and how much profit we made, but these two numbers seemed to take a back seat to the others. It was all about volume. And since volume was what our vice president talked about, it doesn’t take much of a leap to figure out that “how many” was what we cared about and what we measured.
But the business cycle changed, and money got tight. Budgets were coming under scrutiny, and training became an expense instead of an investment or, perhaps, a cost of doing business. Training professionals were being asked to justify their budget requests and, sometimes, their very existence. So in the mid-1990s, the phrase “return-on-investment” became a very important part of the vocabulary.
Luckily, Donald Kirkpatrick had planted the seeds for such an approach years earlier with his fourth level of evaluation—the effect on the business or environment resulting from the trainee’s performance (results). Also in the mid-1990s, Jack Phillips published an article in T+D titled “How Much Is the Training Worth?” and we were off to the races. Impact and ROI became the buzzwords of the day, and much energy was devoted to quantifying both in an effort to answer the question, “how valuable?”
Today, however, executives are asking a much different question. They want to know “how deep?” They want assurance that they have the bench strength they need to achieve their business goals, both now and in the future. They want to be certain that there are talent management policies and processes (including training) in place that will ensure their organizations’ continued success. And in the end, they want to be confident that when the economy turns around and the boomers really do retire, there will be two or three highly qualified employees who are ready to move into every important position.
It isn’t that training (or learning) doesn’t matter anymore—it does. But it’s only one part of a much larger story. As a result, training professionals who isolate themselves (or their organizations) run the very real risk that their work will become marginalized. Talent management is now viewed as a critical part of an organization’s strategy. Training organizations must do everything they can to both participate in the development of talent management strategies and fill a clear role in them. Failure to do so could be a critical mistake that could lead to a question no one wants to hear: “What training organization?”
Larry Israelite’s book Talent Management: Strategies for Success From Six Learning Companies is available from ASTD Press.
Larry Israelite is vice president and manager of human resources development at Liberty Mutual Group; larry.israelite@gmail.com. |