How does your organisation measure the impact of the investment it makes in Management Training and Development?

How much money was spent this year on Management Training and Development and what were the benefits?

To be able to measure the benefits from any Management Training and Development it is important to first be clear about what the objectives of the programme are and what particular people issues need to be resolved by the programme.  For example, do managers need to:

  • Have a greater impact on the performance of the business?
  • Improve motivation and retention to reduce staff turnover?
  • Be more proactive in developing their successors?
  • Reduce the number of poor hires that they make?

Once the organisation is clear about what issues that need to be resolved, the benefits can be more easily measured. Evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of Management Training and Development programmes and interventions can be achieved in a number of ways.

‘Hard’ measures

The impact Management Training has on the performance of the Business, Function or Team can be readily measured using a range of ‘hard’ operational or financial performance measures such as:

  • EBIT
  • Staff turnover costs
  • Recruitment costs
  • Opportunity costs
  • Customer service
  • Business growth

Benchmarks should be set at the start of the training so that improvements can be easily tracked.

‘Soft’ measures

The impact that the interventions have had on behaviour and culture within the organisation can be assessed through a range of ‘soft’ or more subjective measures.  For example:

  • The impact the interventions have had on an individual manager’s behaviour can be assessed from observations and feedback from others (for example via a 360 degree leadership questionnaire) as well as on their ability to achieve their personal targets.
  • The impact the training has had on teams, functions and the organisation’s culture,  relationships, cohesiveness, morale etc can be assessed by using team analysis tools, and cultural and staff surveys and customer questionnaires.

Whatever Management Training and Development your organisation undertakes it is vital that the outcomes are clearly defined at the start and measures put in place to ensure that your investment pays off.