One of the biggest challenges for organizations is what happens after the training. Typically, training is seen as an isolated event. Afterward, many learning development professionals and supervisors find themselves asking, “why is the employee not using the information from training” or “why hasn’t the employee’s performance increased following training.” Questions such as this suggest that knowledge transfer did not occur after the employee left the classroom or virtual training session.

Complex learning involves the integration of qualitatively different knowledge and skills along with their relationships and interaction rules. All the following tasks are complex:

Measuring training effectiveness is one of the many responsibilities for learning and development professionals and one of the many priorities for senior leadership in workplaces. According to Statista Research Department, every year, U.S businesses collectively invest more than $80 billion on training their employees, and global spending on training and development has increased by 400% in 11 years. This investment cost emphasizes the importance of measuring training effectiveness and business impact.

In 2020, an estimated 82.5 billion U.S. dollars were spent on training across the United States (Statista, 2020). Organizations today are spending more on training than they ever have in the past, as the numerous benefits provided by investing in employee training and development opportunities continue to be recognized. Yet the question remains, how much of that training being developed is genuinely translating into noticeable positive differences in employee performance?

Radiant Digital (Radiant) was awarded the NOTC Training and Learning Curriculum Development Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).