I have been tasked with developing an objective means to measure the performance of our trainers. We will use this measurement to pay incentive compensation. I am looking for any suggestions or examples of how you measure the performance of the instructors in your organization. I work for a Bank and we primarily conduct new hire, operational training. Thank you.

Giving incentive compensation for smile sheets and/or exam scores is problematic because it often leads to undesired behaviors. I would try to tie the compensation to something that is meaningful for your company.

For example, I know two of the important metrics for branch banks are teller error rate and teller referrals. If that is what you are training for, perhaps you could give incentive compensation for fewer errors and more referrals. Unfortunately that also makes it hard to isolate trainer performance from individual aptitudes.

Thank you for your response. I will look into the measurements kept by the branches.

I think it's a mistake to base incentives for trainers on the performance of the people they train. Performance is impacted by too many factors to attribute or blame their trainees' job performance on the trainers.

Good classroom facilitation is an art. The key is to set up expectations for how people should perform in the classroom and then OBSERVE them yourself and review the observations with the trainer. If the trainer improves/maintains good stuff over the course of a certain period of time - bingo. Add to that other factors that make a trainer great -- "sharpening the saw" for example. How often and to what extent is the trainer doing so? (See 7 Habits for more info.)

You can also use some cold hard facts, but number of classes taught and number of participants taught doesn't necessarily equal "good trainer".