I'm looking for information on how to measure the impact our T&D dept has on our clients (predominantly staff members). We are higher ed (university) and don't charge for our services, therefore typical cost/benefit/profit measures are not useful. We offer technical and well as softskills courses as well as intervention/consulting. I do some subjective pre & post trng eval in a supervisor course. Our participants range from grounds keepers and house keepers to administrators to IT personnel. I'm finding it difficult to find a set of measures that can show how we impact the operations of the university. I'd like to hear your comments.

Thanks, Gary G

GaryG

Interesting area. What was the purpose/goals of the training and were they mutually agreed upon?

Nero

Hi Gary

I would think measuring the impact of training would be similar in a university to another organization say our bank.

You would need to check whether the training brought about the desired change in attitude, behavior or results of work done.

so if you train your grounds keeper in 'ground keeping' then are grounds being kept measurably better than how it was prior to training. e.g. are hedges being trimmed the way they should [if thats one of the things ground keepers do]

or if you trained staff in teamwork, then did the team got formed, did they work together effectively, etc. you might want to do an attitude survey before and after the training.

in other words, the concepts or methods you find in any good book on training evaluation would serve you just as well as it would serve any other organization.

Nero / Igbal: We conduct a wide variety of training. Some of our training is people skills, some general computer and some specific to software or processes we have at the university. With our audience being so diverse and none of us dealing with profit motives, quantifying improvement seems extremely difficult short of subjective measures. Asking questions about how a person improved post training is one thing. Trying to show institutional benefit is another.

Are there any other higher ed institutions out there measuring training impact at an organizational level?