Kirkpatrick model

The Kirkpatrick model distinguishes four levels of evaluation: reaction, what participants thought of it; learning, what they took in; behaviour, what they do differently at the workplace; and results, what that delivers for the organisation. Later developments advise starting at level four and reasoning backwards.

Practically all training evaluation stalls at level one. A satisfaction score of 8.2 says something about the day and nothing about the work floor, and yet that is the figure that gets reported.

Level three is where it becomes interesting and where most organisations stop, because it demands observation. It need not be complicated, though: a supervisor who watches the same operation ten times three months after the training produces more usable information than any survey. At level four, industry can often connect to figures that are already tracked, such as near-misses per category or the duration of a shutdown.