In a training kind of  a scenario there are basically 3 stake holders that are involved. They are the Employer (or Company) , Employee (or Trainees) and the Trainer (or a Training Organization). I thought the best way to depict their relationship is by way of a jigsaw puzzle as shown in Figure1. And as you notice that there is a very tight relationship between the Employer, Employee and the Trainer. If you need to interpret this in simple terms - The Employer (Company) engages the Trainer (or Training Organization) to train their Employees (or Trainees). The trainer is required to train the trainees based on a set of training objectives that would be mutually discussed and agreed upon before the condut of the the training programme. As per agreed terms, the trainer then conducts the training programme the duration of which depends on the scope of the objectives. Once the trainer completes the training exercise within the stipulated duration, the training programme is said to successfully completed !

Figure 1 - The 3 stake holders

The million dollar question is - How the heck will the employer know that the training objectives were met or not? For instance if it was a training programme on "Advanced Concepts and Programming in MS-Excel". After the completion of the training exercise, if there is no way that I (as in a Company) can figure whether the trainees now really know about the advanced concepts and programming in Excel, there is no way that I will be able to calcualte the ROI (Return On Investment) for this kind of acitvity. So, as a training manager how can I justify the spending on such an activty? So... have we hit a wall or reached cross-roads or just got lost !!! Dont worry...I have the answer for this question ;-) The only way that you can measure the training outcomes objectively is through assessments. This is exactly what is depicted in Figure 2. You have the 4th stake holder called theassessment partner without which the puzzles is not complete !

Figure 2 - The 4th stake holder (Assessment Partner)

So, how exactly can we do this (as in measure training outcomes)? This is done by a 4 step process called as A-T-A-C or in other words Assess, Train, Assess, Certify. This is one of the most effective and quantifiable way of measuring training outcomes.  Let us discuss the details about this methodology in the next part of this writeup.

Till then, bye from me.

Ravi Kumar

Please direct your feedback and suggestions to rk1672@yahoo.co.in