Gains and Outcomes

Several tools are available to help you measure the outcomes and skills gains of your WEP.  

Return on Investment (RoI) methods are applied for in-depth quantitative evaluation of programs by employers who want to have very concrete information about the value of investing in workplace basic skills development.  For them, RoI measurement is crucial.  Generally, RoI expresses the financial return on corporate investment by measuring the full cost of training and relating it to corporate financial performance.

MEASURING  OUTCOMES

Assessment Sheet
This simple, one page tool asks employers to review a checklist of 11 basic skills gained by employees through workplace education programs and identify:
    1) Which skills did their employees gain?
    2) Which skill gains were measured?
Download a copy of this simple tool: Assessment Sheet

Self-Assessment Guide
An organizational Self-Assessment Guide by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) includes an Employee Education, Training and Development section in the Human Resource Development and Management Workbook for assessing workplace education programs and their impact on employee jobs.
    URL: http://www.workforce-excellence.net/html/product2.htm

The Employability Competency System by CASAS is a structure for evaluating individual's strengths and weaknesses as they relate to employability competencies.  Matching learner needs to instruction programs and evaluating learner progress and competency gains are also part of the system.
    URL: http://www.casas.org/05Employability/05EmployabilityOverview.cfm

Employers can use this sample evaluation form to evaluate the effectiveness of their worker mentoring program.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/23/12/46.php

This Training Evaluation Form can be used by employees to evaluate the effectiveness of training they have taken part in and of their instructors. Training participant feedback can be a useful measure of training success.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/22/13/37.php

These planning questions will help employers sort out the nuts and bolts of the value of training. The questions, such as who needs training and how training will be assessed, include examples.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/22/17/10/223931.php
 

The Business Value Assessment toolkit helps practitioners and their employer partners assess the business value of their workforce services. Developed in manufacturing and health care workplaces, the Business Value Assessment toolkit is adaptable and can be applied to a variety of workforce development services, settings and industries.
     URL: http://www.aspenwsi.org/BVAToolkit.asp

CAELA offers a digest on planning, implementing and evaluating workplace ESL programs.
     URL: http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/PLANNINGQA.html

The FreePatentsOnline search engine allows advanced search techniques such as word stemming, proximity searching relevancy ranking and search term weighing to help you find exactly what you are looking for. Other features permit organizing, annotation and sharing of documents.
     URL: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/

MEASURING  ROI

RoI measurement of workplace education programs is possible using a variety of evaluation software packages.  Several RoI packages are available for a fee from consultants, who also offer professional services to help employers apply them to their WEPs.  The advantage of this approach is that the experts can help you ensure you get an accurate result that is customized to meet your need.

One RoI tool is available for download without charge and can be used independently.  

Purchase

For an established consulting company that has measured a number of public and private sector organizations' WEPs and offers specialized, customizable RoI software, contact:
    URL: http://www.imperialcorp.com

For a combination of training media selection and RoI software, ADVISOR 3.5, see:
    URL: http://www.bnhexpertsoft.com/adv3new.htm

Without Charge 

For a corporate RoI methodology already in use within Lord Corporation, a large North Carolina-based company, that may be applied by other companies, see:  RoI Method. 

Workforce HR Trends and Tools presents several formulas for calculating the return-on-investment in technology-based training. The formulas can help employers calculate cost savings and ROI, and perform a break-even or cost-benefit analysis.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/section/11/article/22/13/78.html

This report talks about methods for evaluating training/education offerings based on financial return and these methods include both quantitative and qualitative assessments.
     URL: http://www.careertools.org/rlib/doc_display.asp?docn=8386

This article shows how ROI is a measure of the benefits of training against the costs. The ROI is expressed as a concrete, numerical measure that gives employers more clout in justifying the time and money spent for training.
     URL: http://www.cuna.org/data/newsnow/spec_reports/cpd/cpd4.html

The free Training Payoff Calculator, from Addison, IL-based OneOnOne Computer Training, helps executives calculate the ROI from training. The calculator works with variables, such as the number of people to be trained, average learning time, and costs of training effort to produce projections of profit and ROI.
     URL: http://www.oootraining.com/ooo/support/calculator.html

Staffing-Assessment Tools can help employers measure the return on investment of an assessment tool. The formulas will help you gauge the impact of a bad hire, a good hire, turnover, and a more efficient staff.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/section/06/article/23/40/88.html

Using an HR Audit, such as this one used by the Commonwealth of Virginia, allows organizations to examine their recruiting, training, benefits, and labor relations policies.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/section/09/article/23/39/64.html#Explanation%20of%20Department%20Organization%20Questionnaire

Make training more accountable by incorporating these guiding principles as operating standards in your return-on-investment methodology. Standards and guiding principles keep the evaluation credible and allow for replication of the methodology.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/23/31/90.php

To measure true cost for ROI purposes, consider indirect costs along with direct costs. Companies differ in how they calculate the cost of internal training, but most include the direct costs incurred by the training function, which are discussed in this article.
     URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/22/13/88.php

A Canadian sector council report on calculating the return on training investment includes checklists to help employers identify costs and benefits and a case study example.
     URL: http://www.nssc.ca/files/roti.pdf (1.03 MB)

This article shows how to balance short-term profit with long-term investment in human capital (Benefits & Compensation Digest). Due to socioeconomic shifts including an impending demographic meltdown and a fall in U.S. workforce productivity, it is increasingly important to measure the effectiveness of every human capital development effort through calculating its return on investment (ROI).
     URL: http://www.imperialcorp.com/whatsnew.html

For problems or questions regarding this web site contact campbell@conferenceboard.ca.
Last updated: June 27, 2007.