Assigning Responsibilities

As a first step in the process, one or more individuals should be designated as the internal leader or champion for the process. As in most change efforts, someone must take the responsibility for ensuring that the process is implemented successfully. This leader serves as a champion for measurement and evaluation and is usually the one who understands the process best and sees the vast potential for the contribution of the process. More importantly, this leader is willing to show and teach others.

Defining the spesific responsibilities for the staff is critical because individuals may be unclear as to their specific evaluation assignments. Responsibilities apply to two general groups. The first is the measurement and evaluation group for the entire training and development staff, because all staff members usually have duties assigned to them. Typical responsibilities for this group include the following:

ü      Ensuring that the needs assessment include specific business impact measures

ü      Developing spesific application objectives (level 3) and business impact objectives (level 4) for each program

ü      Focusing the content of the program on performance improvement and ensuring that exercise, case studies, and skill practices relate to the desired objectives

ü      Keeping participants focused on applivation and impact objectives

ü      Communicating rationale and reasons for evaluation

ü      Assisting in follow-up activities to capture application and business impact data

ü      Providing technical assistance for data collection, data analysis, and reporting

ü      Designing instruments and plans for data collection and analysis

ü      Presenting evaluation data to a variety of groups

The second group with specific responsibilities is the technical support function. Depending on the size of the training and development staff, it may help to establish technical experts who provide assistance with measurement and evaluation. When this group is establieshed, everyone must understand that the experts are not there to relieve others of evaluation responsibilities but to supplement technical expertise. Some firms find this approach to be effective. For example, Andersen Consulting has a measurement and evaluation staff of thirty-two individuals who provide technical support for the education and training function. When this type of support is developed, this group is responsibilities revolve around six key areas:

ü      Designing data collection instruments

ü      Providing assistance for developing an evaluation strategy

ü      Analyzing data, including specialized statistical analyses

ü      Interpreting results and making specific recommendations

ü      Developing an evaluation report or case study to communicate overall results

ü      Providing technical support in any phase of the ROI process

The assigment of responsibilities for evaluation also needs attention throughout the evaluation process. Although the training and development staff must have specific responcibilities during an evaluation, it is not unusual to require others in support functions to have responcibility for data collection. These responsibilities are defined when a particular evaluation strategy plan is developed and approved.