The need to develop staff capability to ensure treasury teams can meet their current as well as future goals isn’t a new phenomenon, but today’s treasury leaders and L&D professionals also have to drive these improvements with less money as well as demonstrate the benefit brought to the business as a result of a training course or learning programme. As a result, one of the things we’re often asked when talking to our clients about ACT in-company learning (and if you’ve not heard about what we do, take a look here to find out), is how to prove the effectiveness of a treasury related learning programme and calculate the return on investment to the business. When looking at question of learning programme effectiveness, a good place to start is with Kirkpatrick’s “four-level model for training course evaluation” which was created to help trainers measure the effectiveness of learning in an objective way. What it doesn’t do is answer the second half of our customers’ question, namely how to quantify the return on investment so after we’ve looked at the four levels, we’ll also look at an approach to calculate ROI. Developed by Donald Kirkpatrick in 1959, the Kirkpatrick Model has seen several updates and revisions. It identifies four levels of evaluation, with each level building on the one before it.
The most basic way to evaluate learning is to measure participant reaction. In a lot of cases, this will involve the trainer asking participants to complete a feedback form at the end of the course but you can also use surveys, questionnaires or take verbal feedback. You need to think about the specific questions and reactions you are looking for when devising the questions. It could be:
The next level involves measuring the increase in knowledge, skills and abilities of the learners, which can be determined through tests, assessments, interviews or observation. Formal assessment As you’d expect from the ACT, all our qualifications feature formal assessments but what you may not know is that we can also build bespoke tests and assessments for our tailored learning programmes too. Depending on the outcomes you’re looking for, there are several approaches to choose from:
Informal assessment If formal assessment isn’t the objective of your programme, informal approaches can be used as an alternative. They can provide highly valuable feedback and an indication that a learner has understood what they have learnt and allow learners to demonstrate this in a highly practical, non-threatening way. Some examples include:
The third level of evaluation answers the question – are they applying what they learned? What behaviours are you seeking to change and are the knowledge and skills being applied on the job following training? A way to understand this would be to record a before and after snapshot of a set of behaviours and grade them against the learning objectives of the course. In our bank relationship programme example, this could be observation during client meetings, on the phone or the participants’ ability to obtain and record sales information. This approach can demonstrate the degree to which participants apply their new knowledge in the real world. This can provide clear evidence of who is applying the training and who is not, and can lead management to correct misapplication, and reward close application after training.
At the end of the day, treasury training is about generating a treasury improvement. What specific business measures or KPIs (key performance indicators) do you want to change or improve as a result of the training? The programme for relationship managers may have the following business improvement aims:
The other level of training evaluation relates to return on investment. What specific return on investment are you after as a result of the training? To evaluate your return on investment from a training programme you implement, we suggest you:
You can of course use any of the levels in isolation but a combination of the 5 will give you the full picture. If you choose to use all of them, usually, return on investment follows business impact, business impact follows application, application follows learning, and learning follows satisfaction with training.
ACT in-company learning develops treasury capability and improves organisational effectiveness. Programmes are flexible and whatever you choose, can be accessed whenever and wherever you like. Our treasury and finance expertise covers all sectors – corporate, banking, consultancy and public sector – and all sizes of organisations, from SMEs and local government to large multinational corporations. Leave your team training in our capable hands. For more information visit: https://learning.treasurers.org/in-company