How Did the Decision to Conduct an ROI Study Influence the Design of Coaching Program Essay

How did the decision to conduct an ROI study influence the design of coaching program. Nations Hotel Corporation is one of the reputed USA based hotel company, with an international presence in 15 countries worldwide. Hospitality industries are quiet competitive in nature and today’s success rule of hospitality includes knowledge, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency which provides pleasure of stay and departure to their guests. Any addition or subtraction in these components can increase or decrease the rating of any organization. Nations Hotel with 98% brand awareness and 72% as customer satisfaction ratio were still far from the race of preferred choice amongst the customers. Hence there, arose a need to identify the gap , so a study was conducted by the Nations hotel learning organizations (NHLO), as a result need for high leverage training program (Chapter 1-Introduction to employee training and development- High Leverage Training Program) was determined, which can improve the operational efficiency, help in retention of high performing employees and increase the level of customer satisfaction, so a structured coaching program was proposed in front of senior executives, which can have impact on business . (Chapter 1-Introduction to employee training and devlopment -ASTD Competency model, this model shows the role of training and how it will impact the business strategy). Since these strategic trainings, are expansive in nature , senior executives of Nations hotel were concerned with the calculation of Return on Investments (â€Å"Chapter -6, Training Evaluation-ROI) on coaching project, calculation of direct and indirect cost and benefits achieved through the coaching program became crucial factor in designing the program. Instead of directly going ahead with the coaching program for all employees , Nations hotel selected 25 employees randomly for the training( chapter 6-Training and evaluation-Pilot Testing, random assignment). This small selection of team was an effective decision , as identifying the strength and weakness of the coaching program brought an opportunity to make changes before ,this coaching program became available to all employees, besides this factor, another strong reason was individual coaching was a huge investment for Nations hotel, so through pilot testing evaluating the effectiveness of training and cost , and conducting need assessment was better approach to calculate the ROI for the coaching program, so that finally while evaluating the results and business impact after conducting the coaching program for the executives, Nations hotel can make a decision on further expanding this coaching program for rest of the employees. Hence the coaching program was designed in 14 steps, which comprised of the following steps. 1. Voluntary participation 2. Need for Coaching 3. Self Assessments 4. Commitment for data 5. Roles and responsibilities 6. The match 7. Orientation session 8. The engagement 9. Coaching session 10. Goal setting 11 . Action planning 12. Active learning 13. Progress review 14. Reporting. These steps helped in calculating various components of ROI which includes both the calculation of tangible and non tangible benefits, evaluation of confidence level amongst the newly trained employees, monetary value gained or lost, impact on turnover, measurement of service improvement, and last but not the least job satisfaction amongst employees after this coaching program, which will finally have impact on business. (Chapter 6-Training Evaluation-Results & Return on Investment). Question 2. Discuss the importance of getting participants committed to provide quality data. Determining the effectiveness of training program is referred as evaluation. Kirkpatrick’s four level framework measures the outcomes of an effective training program, which includes following four levels of evaluation, also there is a fifth level of evaluation, which is out of the Kirkpatrick’s framework of evaluation, and is known as Return on Investment. (Chapter 6-Training Evaluation-Kirkpatrick’s four level of framework of evaluation criteria) Level 1 Reaction: It provides feedback about the content of the program, participant’s engagement, data gathered in this level helps in improving the training program Level 2. Learning: Knowledge and skills of trainees are tested through norm referenced test, criterion referenced test or quizzes, observations and work samples, and data collected at this level, helps to judge the skill based outcomes of trainee from the training. Level 3. Application: These are also known as affective outcomes, which are measured through collection of data via interviews and attitude surveys, to measure the skill enhancements after training. Level 4. Results or Business Impact: How much training program has paid off for the company, such as improvement in customer care inclined or declined on turn around time after the training, measuring such outcomes falls, under this level, which is measured by collecting data through performance records, observation, information system Level 5. ROI: This step compares the monetary benefits to the organization with the cost of training, such as by collecting data for both tangible and intangible benefits, which includes direct and indirect cost , level of confidence , job satisfaction , cost benefit analysis etc.. Result of one level of evaluation, becomes the benchmark for the next level of evaluation, this can be best explained by the example of Nations Hotel, where careful and quality data recorded in action plan and company records by executives helped the NHLO team in making of convincing ,coaching business impact program. The ROI process in Nations Hotel, involved gathering data through out the coaching, so that evaluation result can be evaluated in all the above mentioned five levels. Since participants (executives, senior executives, coach) provided data at every level of evaluation, which helped in further clubbing of all the data, that was collected at all five levels separately, were than integrated to provide an overall evaluation of the program, and measure how effectively the program is impacting the strategic goals of the company, careful and accurate data collection at all levels helped the NHLO team to measure the result of coaching program at every step, so that any flaw at one level , can be rectified easily before moving to the next step, for example the benefit cost ratio of NHLO was 3. 21, that is it, suggests that on every dollar spend,$3. 21 was returned, but in absence of accurate data this figure would have been misleading , and could have resulted in fiasco. Not only Nations Hotel, infact most of the companies follows similar process for evaluating the levels, by collecting data at every level, and than utilizing the data for moving ahead with the next level. These data’s were further converted into monetary value, through various ways, which was further utilized in analyzing the ROI on training. In absence of quality data, training will have no impact neither for an individual in terms of cognitive, skills application, and affective outcomes nor for any organization in terms of positive business impact and ROI, which an organization aimed for. Hence quality data from the participants has a huge impact in determining the credibility, reliability and relevance of the training program ,so active participation from the trainees and providing reliable data, is essential for an effective training program (Chapter 6-Training evaluation-Outcomes used in evaluating training programs)