TO: (group or type of employee)
The training department is currently conducting an audit of its performance. As one of our (clients/department employees), your perceptions will be of considerable assistance with this project. Please take a few moments to complete this form and return it. No identification is requested.
The following are the categories of training and the definitions we are using. Read each one and then rate how well you feel our training department is performing in that category. The questions ask for your perceptions—what you think—not nec- essarily information based on an evaluation of factual perfor- mance criteria.
For your ratings, use a nine-point scale (1Low; 5Typical;
and 9High). Select a single number from that scale for each rating. Write the number on the line in front of the category. If you do not have any idea as to how well training is performing in a category, place an ‘‘X’’ on the line for that category.
Training organization—the mission of the function, its internal structure, and internal and external rela- tionships
Training personnel—the selection, qualifications, and motivation of department employees
Employee training—training in requirements for specific job or organizational activities
Employee development—training in requirements for a future job and broadening of abilities for a current job
Remedial training—training conducted to correct inadequate skills, such as in math, reading, or writing
Communications—internal and external communi- cation of the department’s abilities and offerings Identifying training needs—determining the re- quired training of individual employees and the or- ganization
Training design and development —structuring or obtaining a training activity to meet specific objec- tives or outcomes
Training delivery—implementation of training to meet specific objectives (e.g., courses, programs, self-study, etc.)
Training facilities—the physical space and equip- ment allotted to the department to conduct training Organizational development—improving commu- nication and understanding in the organization in order to produce effective, functioning manage- ment and employee teams; establishing or chang- ing to a desired culture.
Finally, all things considered, how well is the training function performing? (Again, use a nine-point scale with 1 Low; 5 Typical; and 9 High.) Write your rating on the following line:
When you have completed the form, please return it to:
Thank you for your assistance in our efforts to provide the best possible training services to our organization.
can only be used with people who have knowledge of the depart- ment’s performance in all categories. If you wish to use it with people who only know performance in some of the categories, you need to revise the form to include just those categories. However, in all cases request an overall rating of the department’s perfor- mance.
Even though identification of the individual completing the form is not required or requested, you need to know from what group of employees or department a completed from is received.
You need to know if a completed form is from an internal client or a department employee. You may also want to know whether a completed form is from management, professional, or nonmanage- ment employees. You can accomplish this by asking on the form for information to identify an employee group or area (not individ- ual employee identification), using different colored paper for the
form you send to each group, or referring to the group in the ad- dress or text.
Do not use numerical or alphabetic coding on the form for identification. Such coding is obvious and tends to make people question whether or not they can be individually identified. Hid- den coding can destroy your ability later to obtain information.
An Ohio-based company’s training department wanted to obtain performance evaluations from operating managers. It felt that by having unsigned replies to a supplied form, the managers would be more forthcoming with their responses.
However, the training department wanted to know from what areas it was receiving input.
The department decided to state in the accompanying letter that the form was not to be signed—no identification was re- quired. However, each form was coded with pinholes located beneath the staple. The coding was discovered and the de- partment was never able to obtain input in the future. Its repu- tation of honesty had been destroyed.
Combining Responses
When you have received all of the completed training department survey forms, the next step is to combine the individual responses by group. To accomplish that, first sort the responses into two areas: training department employees and internal clients. Then, total the rating for each group in each category and divide that total by the number of ratings received for the category. (You are calculating an average rating for each category.)
For example, assume you received the following ratings from five internal clients regarding training personnel. Each client rep- resented a different function within the organization. They and their ratings are:
Client Function Rating
Human resources 7
Accounting 5
Scheduling 8
Administration 6
Marketing 4
The ratings total thirty. Since there were five responses, the average internal client rating for training personnel is six. How- ever, all clients may not respond to all activities. For example, if only four of the five internal clients responded to the question about facilities, then the average rating is based on just the four responses.
Client Function Rating
Human resources 6
Accounting 4
Scheduling 5
Administration 5
Marketing No response
Here the total ratings from internal clients is twenty. Dividing the total by four (the number of internal clients who actually re- sponded) results in an average rating of five.
Figure 2-4 shows a training rating comparison form that can be used for recording your ratings and the averages from department employees and internal clients in each activity. Column one lists the activities. Column two is for your ratings. Column three is for the average ratings of the training department’s employees, and column four is for the average ratings of training’s internal clients.
To complete the form, you first enter your ratings for each ac- tivity from the second column of your training activity perception form (see Figure 2-2) into the second column of the Training Rat- ing Comparison Form (Figure 2-4).
You next enter the average activity ratings you calculated for each group. (Again, the training department employees’ average ratings are entered in column three, and the internal clients’ aver- age ratings are entered in column four.)
Figure 2-4.