9.1 Assessment of workplace learning
Most organisations want to see results from the learning activities that are conducted within the organisation. Learning activities are therefore often assessed alongside the outcomes that the activity hopes to gain. Those outcomes may include the following:
Overall company performance as evaluated by:
- Return on investment
- Cycle time to proficiency (time taken for an individual to be reach basic competence)
- Available skills
- Changes in skill levels and profiles (individual, department and occupations)
- Standards of performance and productivity are raised
- Business strategic measures and process quality measures are met
- Non-training causes of performance problems are isolated and removed
- Reduction in number of accidents
- Improvement in products
- Improvement in personal judgement/ decision making
The learning culture :
- Willingness to learn
- Integration of training as a strategic function
- Differentiation of education and training
- Use of action learning to remove operational problems
- Team cohesiveness
- Staff informing you when they have a training need
Personal learning and development :
- Individual's satisfaction with personal learning needs being enhanced
- Motivated to learn
- Ability to learn
- Confident of own capabilities
- Speed, depth and breadth of learning
- Well-being and access to pathways to further learning or careers
The above extend beyond simply finding a cost-benefit or human value of training. As a result, many of the objectives listed will not be able to be measured using hard data. In these cases the feedback received cannot be viewed as being 'facts', but, rather, as the opinion of those surveyed.