Planning Your Training Evaluation

Effective training evaluation requires preparation. For this reason we strongly recommend that you create an evaluation plan as early as possible (see the link at the bottom of this page for an example evaluation plan template).

If possible, your evaluation plan should be created at the same time as the training is developed. This will help to ensure that the evaluation objectives and methods are tightly aligned with the training objectives and expectations regarding the impact and outcomes of the training.

Producing an evaluation plan will allow you to identify necessary resources and any potential barriers to the evaluation process. Crucially, it will also give you an opportunity to get involvement from key stakeholders. This should in turn help to focus stakeholders’ attention on supporting achievement of the training objectives.

Your evaluation plan will need to consider the following:

• the scope, aims and objectives of the evaluation – (as mentioned above, these should be based primarily on the training objectives, expectations of outcomes and agreed success criteria)
• the evaluation time frame
• who will be involved in developing and managing the evaluation process and how they can be engaged in the process
• the resources needed
• areas of expertise needed
• what will be evaluated, which data will need to be collected, who will provide it, and how and when it will be collected
• what data analysis will be needed, how the results will be reported and who they will be reported to
• the success criteria that will be used to judge the success of the evaluation process.

You will find guidance on all of these areas via the links below.

• Linking Training Objectives with Business Needs
• Getting People Involved
• Collecting Data
• Analysing Data and Creating Reports
• Example Evaluation Action Plan Template (Word)
• Example Performance Improvement Data Collection Template (Word)
• Example Training Evaluation Report Template (Word)

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