Switching gears in case you really meant measuring training effectiveness as several responses seem to indicate.
As an ISO 9001:2000 registered company, one should define competencies & measure the competencies, keeping a record of said measurement.
When I was a QA Manager at an industrial construction company, we defined competency for each company position in skills & education for each job function. Skills required testing of some sort - i.e. welders had to be tested & qualified per contractual code requirements (i.e., API1104, D1.1, B31.3, B31.1,...) for the position we were hiring them for. Education requirements met were shown by having a copy of a transcript.
Those who were issued sets of manuals were required to return a sheet indicating they had read the revision or new released document, understood it, and had communicated it to those working for them that were affected by the document. BTW, we were compliant with ISO 9002:1994, but not registered.
Policies describe:
"Why" the activity occurs
Procedures describe:
"What" the activity is-
"Who" performs the activity-
"When" the activity is takes place-
Work instructions describe:
"How" the activity is performed.
Back to training. I went through a professional trainers certification program about 10 years ago with Texas A&M. There are four basic kinds of training evaluations according to Kirkpatrick:
1) Participant evaluations: We called these "smile sheets" when I was in Professional Development (the politically correct term for "Training"
. I hold these in the same regard as a CofC. Why? Because the instructor is graded based on how the student felt that day. Was the instructor amusing? Did class get out on time? Were the cookies good? Smile sheets do nada toward showing training effectiveness.
2) Course evaluations: Includes pre-tests & post-tests. A little better than level 1 evaluations, but true measure, IMHO, is how well a person tests.
3) Task evaluations: This is the best form of evaluation. Can the participant sucessfully now demonstrate ability to perform?
4) Profit increase evaluations: This is the ultimate measure of training effectiveness. Have you seen an increase in profits (or reduced losses) due to the training?
We used Level 1 & 2 evals for the courses I taught. Since much of the course content I was responsible for was considered "soft skill", it was more difficult to measure at the level 3 or level 4 evaluation.
Other websites about Training Effectiveness:
