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History |
The ASTD Benchmarking Forum was originally convened in 1991 to provide a joint opportunity for training professionals from leading corporations and ASTD to conduct comparative analysis and identify the most successful practices in training. The Forum was intended to be a learning opportunity for all involved to share information and identify new ways of examining and evaluating training practices. The formal mission of the ASTD Benchmarking Forum has been:
To increase the effectiveness of training and learning in organizations, the Forum will identify best practices of workplace training and learning among member companies using the tools and techniques of benchmarking, and disseminate this information.
To fulfill this mission, a number of goals were established, including:
Establish common metrics and operational definitions.
Gather workplace training data from participating companies to develop a common, reliable, and shared database of information for members.
Use the benchmarking process to improve training in member companies, and share these improvements with the wider training community.
The ASTD Benchmarking Forum held its first meeting on December 4, 1991 with 19 companies in attendance:
Aetna Life & Casualty
American Express
AT&T
Amoco
Arthur Andersen
Boeing
Chase-Manhattan Bank
Digital Equipment Corporation
Dow Chemical
ETHYL Corporation
Federal Express
GTE
Hewlett Packard
Honda of America
IBM
Motorola
Pacific Bell
Texas Instruments
Xerox