Addressing Resistance when Implementing a Learning Evaluation Strategy

Find the evaluation evaders in your organization

In our current economic downturn, many learning organizations are redoubling their efforts to make their organizations more efficient.  They are consolidating organizations, reducing headcount, centralizing operations and eliminating non-value added functions.  However, many of these same organizations fail to measure their effectiveness or the impact they are having on the business.   And within these organizations are pockets of resistance to measuring the effectiveness and value of their training programs.  I call these people evaluation evaders.  What do evaluation evaders look like and how do you work with them?  I’ll address the first part of this question in this blog post and discuss the second part next week.

In my interactions with organizations in diverse industries, I’ve seen two types of evaluation evaders: those who have a complete aversion to measuring and evaluating impact and results of their training programs and those who are willing to evaluate their programs as long as they can do it their way, with their surveys, processes, systems and analytical methods. 

Why do these individuals evade training evaluation and how do we recognize them?  Let’s talk about their profiles and clues to spot them.

The first group, with an aversion to training evaluation, is skeptical about evaluation or even, as one client phrased it, fearful.  They are often unfamiliar with learning evaluation methods or unsure about what’s entailed in implementing new learning measurement processes.  While they are comfortable looking at training activity and utilization data, when it comes to measuring value , they prefer gut feel to structured approaches.  They perceive evaluation to be unnecessary overhead.  You can recognize them fairly easily.  They tend to say things like:  

• “My business partners give me feedback. Trust me, when something isn’t working, I’ll know about it.”
• “My staff is stretched thin and I’m under pressure to deliver a lot of training programs. Evaluation just isn’t a priority for me right now.”
• “If I’m given a dollar to spend, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to spend it on a learning program than on evaluation?”

The second group, who wants to do it their way, has a somewhat different profile.  The evaders in this group, to their credit, are evaluating their learning solutions in one fashion or another.  Some of them may be doing great work using valid and reliable survey instruments and applying industry best practices to their processes.   More often than not, you’ll also find groups who are using ad hoc or one-off methods with little rigor or quality control. Regardless of the goodness of their methods, these individuals don’t want to conform to a standard approach.  They are concerned about losing control and flexibility in their surveys, process and reporting.  They worry that they will be held to a standard that perhaps they can’t meet. Many are concerned that they will be saddled with overhead for evaluation or they will be required to new build evaluation skills and capabilities in their learning professionals.   All of these factors make this group of evaluation evaders wary of adopting standard methods, tools systems and processes.  These evaders say things like:

• “I ask very course specific information on my surveys. I’ll lose important data if I use your instrument.”
• “My paper method works great. If I use an online system, then I won’t get enough data to determine how I’m doing.”
• “Comparing my learning programs to others in the company isn’t meaningful. My programs are unique.”
• “If I use an online system, the instructors won’t have the ability to look at the course results when the class is over.”
• “I have my own method of computing business impact. It works for me and my business partners like it. I don’t want to use a standard approach.”

So, to you the reader: Do you have evaluation evaders?  If so, what do they look like in your organization? What do they say when you ask for their support for implementing consistent and industry proven training evaluation methods?  How do they evade your efforts to introduce evaluation into your organization?

In my next post, I’ll talk about methods to address resistance and how to deal with each type of evaluation evader. Tune in next week. Or view my recent webinar: Creating a Learning Measurement & Evaluation Strategy,  in the Previous Webinars section of our Webinar Series page.