Customer Reviews

Training for Impact: How to Link Training to Business Needs and Measure the Results (Jossey-Bass Management)

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Lots of lip service gets paid to training, but most training functions usually reside at the cutting edge of the downsizing axe. This book provides training managers with methods for reporting how a training program contributes to a company's bottom line. It sheds light on how the intangible attributes of trainees (one of which is the knowledge learned in a training program) get transferred into work skills, and how both knowledge and skills can be quantified into numbers which management can understand.

The only drawbacks are: 1) that there is not enough of a discussion about statistical methods for data interpretation, and 2) some examples of purposeful, targeted questions would definitely be useful. However, overall, I am happy to have this text become part of my daily playbook.

As an IT or business person, one might write this book off of your list; however, I found it good, with a perpetual value that transcends its copyright date. Personalizing the text, it would ask: are you a contributor, knowing your impact, or a performer, doing your job? If one adapts the title to "Link Business Needs and Measure Results" it would describe my daily problem of linking IT to Business? I believe that it does. The indirect value is that by reading in the context of training rather than IT, perhaps we can see our own problems. The direct value is that every day we encounter people, process and technical problems, and within these are knowledge and skill problems; by considering a different approach, perhaps we can be more successful. There are many good thoughts, but more, it contrasts thought and pattern making its content identifiable to both consultants and executives.