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When you measure their learning, employees will manage to make it happen.

We measure performance, praise, compensation, quotas and even time away from work, but there is an age old challenge of measuring the impact of training. Do you want those you lead to count their days off and how close they are to quota or do you want them to build their skills to not only meet but exceed their given goal? Remember, what you measure, they manage to make happen, but how do you measure it exactly? Here are five ways that will help.

Understand What You Want

There’s an old saying that goes “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there”. The same is true of what you want for the employees you send to training. If you want to simply check it off the list, then send them and be done with it. If you want change in behavior or new skills, then get clear on exactly what you’re looking for, so you’ll know it when you see it.

Share Clear Objectives

For any training event on the web or in a class, the more attention you pay to what you want them to learn, the more they will focus on getting it. Not only to do you want to KNOW what you want, but you want to share it with them. Outline your objectives for what they will learn from the event and plan a meeting afterward to make sure they got it. If they know you’ll ask “what did you learn?” they’ll work to get you some answers.

Assess Their Capacity

Whether you use competencies, capacity, or capability to describe what employees can do, there is a way to literally measure what they can naturally do well and where they will struggle. A personality assessment can help in this area with actual measurement of what is natural for them. The non-natural traits are still things they can do, but why not put them in a job that they will excel at with little effort with a lot of room to exceed your expectations?

Set Up Pre and Post Baselines

Our most popular tool for baseline set up is the CORE Profile®. It’s a four quadrant assessment that goes way beyond personalities and provides in depth data and graphs showing one’s perceived and actual behaviors, and when and why they act that way. When used as a before and after tool it shows how they functioned before class and how the training changed that behavior.

Measure Progress

Not only does the CORE Profile® give you a baseline, but it can be used as a measurement tool for progress. A portion of it can be retaken at a later date to show a complete before and after picture. This kind of measurement keeps your training from being a “one hit wonder” and makes it a consistent development effort with exponential results increasing over time. You don’t want them just better for a day, but better and better over the life of their tenure with your organization.

For more information on leadership development and training provided by Contagious Companies, go to ContagiousCompanies.com.

I’m Monica Wofford, and that’s your Monday Moment. Have a great Monday, an even better week and of course, stay contagious!