Extract from assignment.
"Staff had to re-apply for their own jobs and consequently, there were a lot of negative perceptions about the values espoused by the organisation and about staff having things done to them and not with them."

Now, when staff had to re apply for their own jobs, it means that all are retrenched. No one is single out and only those who are interested to get back their jobs need to reapply. The employees will perceive the management as seeing who is really in need of their jobs. Those who are in need will reapply back for their jobs. Those who want to go, will just go. The employees will also perceive that those who reapply back their jobs will be at the mercy of the management, because they need the money and will appear 'weak' in the eyes of the management. They will perceive that the management can do anything to them because they need the jobs badly.

The negative perceptions about the values espoused by the organisation will probably referred to the values of organization such as taking care of their human resources, value of human assets. It is likely that through the actions of the management, little communication and forced retrenchment, etc, the values of human assets, teamwork, two way flow communications are no longer espoused by the organization. The sentence ' things done to them and not with them' clearly points to lack of teamwork and lack of communication between management and employees. It is likely that the employees will perceive that the management are out to get them, rather than working with them.

Key words from the assignment
"You are newly appointed as an external appointee as Department Head in an organization, managing about 20 employees."

Analysis of the above sentence

The word 'external appointee' means that you are brought in from outside the organization. What does this implicate?
First, you are new to the organization, meaning you do not know the culture of the organization. You have to get to know the history and culture of the organization. If you have been in the organization, you would have the advantage of knowing everyone , their personalities, values of the organization or management. In this case, you do not have this advantage. You will have to start from scratch.

Secondly, As someone from outside the organization to head the department, means that you will face certain obstacles. What is the perceptions of the employees of you? Will they trust an outsider? Most likely not. They will view you with suspicions, that you are with the management.
Will you be able to get their respect? Since they do not know you, you will need to demonstrate your capacity and ability to them before they will give you their trust. You will have to earn it before you can use your powerbase. Position power is not going to work well here. You need to demonstrate expert power to gain their respect.

For this issue, you will need to read up chapter one on the relevant sections on effective managing, functions and role of a manager. Read up the various theories about effective managers. You will need this manage the negative attitudes and perceptions.

Something you should ask in the forum in the Studydesk on this.
We are not told about the demographic factors of the twenty employees. How many males, females, age, qualifications? These are important in making assumptions about their perceptions and attitudes too.

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Today’s economic reality is that all businesses are extremely cost conscious. This consciousness is forcing training managers to either make the business case or face the consequences. A recent article published by the ASTD in its Training and Development Magazine pointed out that in order “to ensure future success” learning leaders must:

• Understand the organization’s business, its business model, and how it makes money in the industry. The measurement of the training must mirror the philosophy of the company.

• Speak the language of the business to gain credibility. The training evaluation must be done in the language of business, that is in terms of profitable return on investment spent.

• Understand the balance sheet and how it relates to business success measures. At the end of the day, the money spent on training and evaluation must return profit in multiple amount so as to cut down the return time period as short as possible.

Training professionals, who were attendees at the Conference Board of Canada’s Annual Learning and Development Conference in 2003, unanimously agreed that global economic factors were forcing them to find alternative options for measuring learning success.

The end result was a dissatisfied customer who had the impression that the training group either did not truly understand or was unable to meet the business requirements. This occurred in most cases, although there was a genuine attempt (on the part of the training manager) to show the business impact of training. The setback was that the methodology used to determine business needs was a training methodology, not a business methodology.

Training methodologies do a good job of identifying issues that are important to training professionals, but are not equipped with the tools necessary to sufficiently capture business requirements. In order to accurately capture issues that are critical to all process stakeholders, a business methodology (with business tools) must be used. In order to effectively communicate with business professionals, a business language must be spoken, the return on investment.


-David L. Hallowell

Managing partner, Six Sigma Advantage, Inc

How do you conduct a training evaluation? Here is a quick guide on some appropriate information sources for each level.

Level 1 (Reaction)

• completed participant feedback questionnaire
• informal comments from participants
• focus group sessions with participants

Level 2 (Learning)

• pre- and post-test scores
• on-the-job assessments
• supervisor reports

Level 3 (Behavior)

• completed self-assessment questionnaire
• on-the-job observation
• reports from customers, peers and participant’s manager

Level 4 (Results)

• financial reports
• quality inspections
• interview with sales manager

When considering what sources of data you will use for your evaluation, think about the cost and time involved in collecting the data. Balance this against the accuracy of the source and the accuracy you actually need. Will existing sources suffice or will you need to collect new information?

Think broadly about where you can get information. Sources include:

• hardcopy and online quantitative reports
• production and job records
• interviews with participants, managers, peers, customers, suppliers and regulators
• checklists and tests
• direct observation
• questionnaires, self-rating and multi-rating
• Focus Group sessions

Once you have completed your evaluation, distribute it to the people who need to read it. In deciding on your distribution list, refer to your previously stated reasons for conducting the evaluation. And of course, if there were lessons learned from the evaluation on how to make your training more effective, act on them!

Our downloadable products can help you plan and implement your training evaluation project.

In the beginning, Donald Kirkpatrick set forth a four-level approach to the evaluation of training in a series of articles appearing in the journal of what was then known as the American Society of Training Directors. The first of these four seminal articles was published in November of 1959. The remaining three articles were published in the succeeding three months, with the fourth and final article appearing in February of 1960. These articles can be found in Evaluating Training Programs, a collection of articles compiled by Kirkpatrick from the pages of the ASTD Journal and published by ASTD in 1975. (Fred Nickols 2000)

This revolutionary work set the stage and gave training professionals a model by which to finally measure the effectiveness of training programs. Even today, almost 30 years after the collection of Kirkpatrick’s work was published, virtually all-training programs are still assessed using this model.

In recent years there has been growing criticism of Kirkpatrick’s approach to evaluating training programs. Kevin Kurse (the e-learning guru) points out “critics of the Kirkpatrick model say that it doesn’t take the business impact far enough and that the final step in any training program should be a "fifth level" of evaluation -- financial return. This ultimate evaluation determines the financial return on investment (ROI) of the training program”.

Many of Kirkpatrick’s detractors are they themselves trapped in what we will call the Kirkpatrick paradigm. In this exemplar, the training professional makes virtually all decisions about what is important, what should be measured, what should be reported, and what constitutes return on investment for training. Frequently these determinations occur as soon as a request for training is made, and prior to any serious discussion with the requesting party. The criteria are predetermined even before the training gets off the ground.
The reporting will correspond with, and the measurements fit into the context of Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation.


Kirkpatrick’s model fails to take into account many of the factors that contribute to identifying how return on investment is identified in other business processes. These factors, which include corporate goals, corporate culture, different audience types, and the position of the process in the organization, do not neatly fit into the Kirkpatrick model.

Other components of the Kirkpatrick paradigm encompass its methodology and language. Evaluation models based on Kirkpatrick use a legacy training approach to measure the “business” impact of the activity. These “business” results are then reported in a proprietary “training” language. A valid question to ask might be, if one is trying to show business results or impact; why not use a business model and business tools to measure, and business language to report?

From the perspective of many business people, this foreign language, unfamiliar methodology, and (what to them are) meaningless reports have long been a source of frustration. The advent of the electronic delivery of training programs, and the increased capital investment required to develop training programs, has expedited this frustration and may well have made the Kirkpatrick model and the Kirkpatrick paradigm obsolete.

This article discusses how to apply a business methodology and metrics to training programs. It will present a business model that (when applied to training) will identify the correct metrics to use, the appropriate language to speak, and the right reports to present to all stakeholders.

The Kirkpatrick Model

The most well-known and used model for measuring the effectiveness of training programs was developed by Donald Kirkpatrick in the late 1950s. It has since been adapted and modified by a number of writers, however, the basic structure has well stood the test of time. The basic structure of Kirkpatrick’s four-level model is shown here.

Figure 1 - Kirkpatrick Model for Evaluating Effectiveness of Training Programs

The difficulty and cost of conducting an evaluation increases as you move up the levels. So, you will need to consider carefully what levels of evaluation you will conduct for which programs. You may decide to conduct Level 1 evaluations (Reaction) for all programs, Level 2 evaluations (Learning) for “hard-skills” programs only, Level 3 evaluations (Behavior) for strategic programs only and Level 4 evaluations (Results) for programs costing over $50,000. Above all else, before starting an evaluation, be crystal clear about your purpose in conducting the evaluation.

n Kirkpatrick's four-level model, each successive evaluation level is built on information provided by the lower level.

ASSESSING TRAINING EFFECTIVENESS often entails using the four-level model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick (1994). According to this model, evaluation should always begin with level one, and then, as time and budget allows, should move sequentially through levels two, three, and four. Information from each prior level serves as a base for the next level's evaluation. Thus, each successive level represents a more precise measure of the effectiveness of the training program, but at the same time requires a more rigorous and time-consuming analysis.

Level 1 Evaluation - Reactions

Just as the word implies, evaluation at this level measures how participants in a training program react to it. It attempts to answer questions regarding the participants' perceptions - Did they like it? Was the material relevant to their work? This type of evaluation is often called a “smilesheet.” According to Kirkpatrick, every program should at least be evaluated at this level to provide for the improvement of a training program. In addition, the participants' reactions have important consequences for learning (level two). Although a positive reaction does not guarantee learning, a negative reaction almost certainly reduces its possibility.

Level 2 Evaluation - Learning

To assess the amount of learning that has occurred due to a training program, level two evaluations often use tests conducted before training (pretest) and after training (post test).

Assessing at this level moves the evaluation beyond learner satisfaction and attempts to assess the extent students have advanced in skills, knowledge, or attitude. Measurement at this level is more difficult and laborious than level one. Methods range from formal to informal testing to team assessment and self-assessment. If possible, participants take the test or assessment before the training (pretest) and after training (post test) to determine the amount of learning that has occurred.

Level 3 Evaluation - Transfer

This level measures the transfer that has occurred in learners' behavior due to the training program. Evaluating at this level attempts to answer the question - Are the newly acquired skills, knowledge, or attitude being used in the everyday environment of the learner? For many trainers this level represents the truest assessment of a program's effectiveness. However, measuring at this level is difficult as it is often impossible to predict when the change in behavior will occur, and thus requires important decisions in terms of when to evaluate, how often to evaluate, and how to evaluate.

Level 4 Evaluation- Results

Level four evaluation attempts to assess training in terms of business results. In this case, sales transactions improved steadily after training for sales staff occurred in April 1997.

Frequently thought of as the bottom line, this level measures the success of the program in terms that managers and executives can understand -increased production, improved quality, decreased costs, reduced frequency of accidents, increased sales, and even higher profits or return on investment. From a business and organizational perspective, this is the overall reason for a training program, yet level four results are not typically addressed. Determining results in financial terms is difficult to measure, and is hard to link directly with training.

Methods for Long-Term Evaluation

• Send post-training surveys
• Offer ongoing, sequenced training and coaching over a period of time
• Conduct follow-up needs assessment
• Check metrics (e.g., scrap, re-work, errors, etc.) to measure if participants achieved training objectives
• Interview trainees and their managers, or their customer groups (e.g., patients, other departmental staff)

Elaine C. Winfrey
Graduate Student
SDSU Educational Technology

In 1975, Donald Kirkpatrick first presented a four-level model of evaluation that has become a classic in the industry:

• Level One: Reaction
• Level Two: Learning
• Level Three: Behavior
• Level Four: Results

Level One: Students' Reaction

In the first level , students are asked to evaluate the training after completing the program. These are sometimes called smile sheets or happy sheets because in their simplest form they measure how well students liked the training. Because this type of evaluation is so easy and cheap to administer, it usually is conducted in most organizations.

Level Two: Learning Results

Level Two in the Kirkpatrick model measures learning results. In other words, did the students actually learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes the program was supposed to teach? To show achievement, have students complete a pre-test and post-test, making sure that test items or questions are truly written to the learning objectives. By summarizing the scores of all students, trainers can accurately see the impact that the training intervention had. This type of evaluation is not as widely conducted as Level One, but is still very common.

Level Three: Behavior in the Workplace

Students typically score well on post-tests, but the real question is whether or not any of the new knowledge and skills are retained and transferred back on the job. Level Three evaluations attempt to answer whether or not students' behaviors actually change as a result of new learning.

• Ideally, this measurement is conducted three to six months after the training program. By allowing some time to pass, students have the opportunity to implement new skills and retention rates can be checked. Observation surveys are used, sometimes called behavioral scorecards. Surveys can be completed by the student, the student's supervisor, individuals who report directly to the student, and even the student's customers.

Level Four: Business Results

The fourth level in this model is to evaluate the business impact of the training program. Below are sample training programs and the type of business impact data that can be measured.

• Sales training. Measure change in sales volume, customer retention, length of sales cycle, profitability on each sale after the training program has been implemented.
• Technical training. Measure reduction in calls to the help desk; reduced time to complete reports, forms, or tasks; or improved use of software or systems.
• Quality training. Measure a reduction in number of defects.
• Safety training. Measure reduction in number or severity of accidents.
• Management training. Measure increase in engagement levels of direct-reports