HR professional preparing an internal mentoring (or another internal training) program in a company should reckon with the fact that his superiors will want him to prove its ROI. Traditional qualitative indicators such as the number of satisfied participants are not enough any more. The HR professional should therefore always be start with the question: "What is the business objective of my training program?"
Talentmgt.com recently published a list of practical steps for measuring the ROI of mentoring. However, these rules can also be used for other internal training activities.
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Determine a specific business objective to focus on using the particular type of training (e.g. increasing retention of new employees).
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Identifying specific ways to achieve the set objective (e.g. creating rules for mentors to help newcomers quickly adapt to the corporate culture).
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Carefully link mentors/internal trainers to employees. Make sure you act based on clearly defined skills your employees are missing.
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Allow employees to identify their goals within the training program and provide them with tools to measure their progress.
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Create questionnaires for collecting feedback after the end of the program. In addition to the participants, involve also their managers to rate their level of improvement.
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Clearly specify the data sources for measuring the success of the program. Consider what specific reports you will need and what you will be comparing in advance.
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