Measure Employee Training Using Work Outputs

Six Box / Performance Thinking Methodology Applied to Employee Training & Development

WORK BACKWARDS > What are the business results that you want your employees to achieve?

Business results are defined as:

1. 1. Revenues, sales, profitability.
   2. Client renewals/retentions.
   3. Customer satisfaction.
   4. Operational Efficiency.
   5. Risk mitigation/business continuity.

What are Employee Work Outputs (WO):

Work outputs are the products of the employee’s behaviors – those measurable results that can be increased, as a direct result of the training you conduct to the employees.

WO are a valuable tool that your organization can use, to connect desired employee behaviors to your organization’s business results.

1. 1. A way to define outputs – what do you want your people to do and what must they produce? Think numbers.
   2. You should always be asking yourself when it comes to your people – what must the employee be able to do/contribute, that is valuable to the organization as a direct result of the employee having training.
   3. What are good criteria that you can use for identifying, defining, measuring the employee work outputs? Some criteria to identify a good work output are:
      1. Noun, thing, countable, valuable contribution to the organization
      2. Deliverables
      3. Transactions
      4. Milestones
      5. Decisions
      6. Progress indicators
      7. Relationships
      8. Changes/Process Improvements

What are the employee behaviors (tasks, tactics) that you want to impact through training?

1. 1. Just because we train them does not mean they will behave/WORK that way.
   2. How will they apply training to their job (outputs)?
   3. How will training be reinforced?
   4. How will training’s impact be assessed during their performance review?

Measuring Employee Performance:

1. 1. Measuring performance is critical b/c:
      • Measures are how we keep score.
   2. Measuring performance is hard because:
      • It can be difficult to define what you want/need to measure.
      • Many organizations do not understand how important it is to measure performance. They are not good at it.
   3. When we talk about measuring – we are talking about 3 things:
      • Performance – what we want to measure. Critically important that we not only measure but the process we employee to achieve that desired measurable outcome.
      • Countable units/measures of performance. It is best for the employee tasked with achieving the goal to set the units/measured of their performance.
      • Goals – a goal is a measurable performance target that we wish to achieve with those measures. To be realistic, the target (desired performance outcome) must be created by the employee.

Customer Diagram:

Have your employees write down the outputs they produce for any/all of their internal (peer) and your external clients. By doing so, you bring together the measurable outputs of their work with measurable impact to your internal and external clients.