EPC Direct is fully committed to the continuous development of its staff, in the same ways as we continuously develop our services. This will be achieved by helping all staff identify and meet their own job and business-related development needs. This policy will ensure that we have the adaptability and flexibility to thrive and succeed as a business. To do this, all line managers, through the Performance Review process, will:
Identifying training & development needs
Identifying training and development needs, and helping individuals to improve their performance, are key responsibilities for line managers, so they are expected to be actively involved in their team's training and development. Line managers are also responsible for measuring the effectiveness of any training and development undertaken by team members, with assistance from HR.
The skills and knowledge that will be needed for the future success of EPC Direct will become apparent as each year's business plan is drafted and communicated to teams within EPC Direct and individual performance objectives agreed. Where individual skills, knowledge or the development of competencies are needed to achieve our business objectives, these should be recorded on the Development Needs Assessment plan, which forms part of our Performance Review process.
Setting and evaluating learning objectives/outcomes
EPC Direct has a number of key business objectives that it needs to achieve. These objectives can be achieved only through harnessing the abilities and skills of everyone in EPC Direct and by releasing potential and maximising opportunities for development. If individuals need to learn in order to achieve business objectives, it is important that any training and development in which we invest has a relationship to our business objectives, so we can demonstrate the contribution that learning makes towards overall organisational success.
To demonstrate this contribution, individuals will agree "learning objectives" with their line managers prior to undertaking a learning activity. Learning objectives will be the means by which managers and EPC Direct can measure how effective training and development has been towards achieving our business objectives or performance. Setting learning objectives will therefore provide a benefit for everyone:
For individuals, objectives give a better understanding of what is expected of them; where priorities lie, where their contribution fits into the organisation and how they are progressing. For managers, objectives provide a basis for allocating responsibility to individuals for achieving certain results, monitoring the achievement of results and providing solid evidence, which is less subjective, for assessing an individual's performance. For the organisation, objectives give a greater likelihood of strategic and corporate plans being achieved.
Once someone has experienced a training and development activity or learning, we will measure its impact and effectiveness on individual performance and the organisation. Again, line managers are expected to be part of this process by defining the performance standards (or measures) when setting objectives and deciding on the methods that they will use to evaluate the learning. (Personnel Services will of course be available throughout the process to provide guidance and support).
There are two key stages that will be used to evaluate training and development:
Reaction: At this level, evaluation provides information on the attitudes of a participant to learning, but it does not measure how much they have actually learned. That being said, if a participant has a positive reaction to the learning experience they are more likely to implement what they have learned. Evaluation at this level will be measured by a post-learning questionnaire, which will be completed immediately after the learning activity has taken place. Normally, Personnel Services will be responsible for issuing this type of questionnaire.
Performance: Evaluation at this level looks at the impact of a learning experience on individual performance at work. Key to this area of evaluation will be the need to have established learning objectives prior to the learning experience so that when evaluation takes place there are measures to use. For example, an important learning objective for a junior secretary attending a Word training course may be "to produce typed correspondence with no spelling or typographical errors." In this example, a manager would be able to evaluate the secretary's performance using a measure of "no spelling or typographical errors". Ideally, evaluation on performance should take place approximately 3 - 4 months after the learning activity. Line managers should undertake this evaluation.
To assist line managers, there are a variety of methods that can be used to measure the effectiveness of the learning. Some of these include: