Value of Training
One day, Dave Palm, the director of training at LensCrafters, got a call suggesting that top executives were looking to improve the company's bottom line, and couldn't find enough tangible evidence that the company's training programs were producing a measurable return on the company's investment. Top management at this optical retailer understood that employee training was important, but they wanted to know what evidence was available to show that there was in fact a payoff to the organization from the money being spent on training. The phone conversation ended with a challenge, "What are you going to do about this?" If you were the director of training in this situation, what types of measures would you like to have available before you respond to top management? That is, what types of evidence do you think management would find convincing that training was having a positive impact on the organization? Why did you pick the measures that you did? How would you go about collecting the data for the measures you have selected?