Donald Kirkpatrick, an American researcher, author of several bestsellers, president of the professional council of trainers and consultants ARSD (American Research and Development Society), has developed the most effective method for assessing the effectiveness of personnel training and development.
Donald Kirkpatrick Model
According to D. Kirkpatrick, evaluation is as important as setting goals, selecting participants, developing a schedule, and other stages. He believes that this indicator can help determine whether the program fully meets the needs of the employees who are being trained.
In addition, an analysis of the training system allows us to find out how well the teacher suits the employees: are his methods really effective, can he motivate students to gain new knowledge, improve their communication skills, and teach them to solve specific organizational problems.
Kirkpatrick's model has become overseas chinese in usa data a classic, it allows you to find out the level of satisfaction with the training process of employees. With its help, a manager can find out whether the training schedule suits employees, how competently the workload is distributed, whether the chosen program is balanced. But most importantly, this model gives an answer to the question of what measures can be taken to make the training process even more productive.
The peculiarity of this method is that the assessment is carried out according to a four-level algorithm, in which each stage is important, because the next level depends on it.
The higher the level, the more difficult it becomes to conduct the analysis, but at the same time it provides a lot of useful information. You cannot skip any stage, even if the evaluator considers it not particularly important:
Reaction. Find out the employees' opinion about the training. Regular questionnaires are suitable for this. Questions can be about how well the program meets modern business requirements, the ease of information delivery, the organization of lessons, etc.
Learning. We find out what knowledge has been added to the employees’ minds, whether their level of competence and interest has increased. Select the criteria for the effectiveness of training. Use tests and practical tasks. In addition, business games or case tests are good at helping to find out the necessary information.
Behavior. We evaluate how applicable the acquired knowledge is in real situations. To conduct the analysis, you can use conventional evaluation methods, such as “360 degrees” and KPI evaluation.
Results. We evaluate the final results that the employees who completed the training were able to achieve. Compare “before” and “after” using the most important indicators, for example, applications, product sales, attracted consumers, work on retaining existing clients, loyalty of the target audience to the organization, etc.
The main advantage of assessing personnel performance using the Kirkpatrick model is the ability to see a complete picture of the effectiveness of employee training.
Its negative aspects include problems with analysis at the level of determining behavioral factors and the reluctance of some managers to evaluate their knowledge and work with coaches. But the most significant thing is that no calculation of the payback of training is carried out.