Designing and Preparing to Implement an Evaluation - Case Study Example

The work is incomplete because I have reached page limit of 6, for which I have been paid. Designing and Implementing Evaluation Plan Final Project Information Technology Training Program Student Name Indiana State University HRD 473 – Evaluation in Organizations June 28, 2012 Abstract This document provides a design and implementation of an evaluation plan for Information Technology training program in a fictitious organization named American Sigma Motors. The organization deals with manufacturing of automotive spare parts, their sales and purchases of raw material. The document would mainly be focused on the evaluation of the IT training program by identifying evaluation plan, stakeholders, evaluation design, data collection and analysis methods, their rationale along with forecasted return over investment. This document would help decision makers and the stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding training programs. Keywords: Training evaluation plan, training program, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), evaluation design, data collection method, sampling techniques, data analysis methods, return on investment. Evaluation Plan of Enterprise Resource Planning System’s Training Background and Rationale American Sigma Motors located in Detroit, Michigan, deals with design, manufacture, and sells motor. The organization has a total of nine hundred and fifty (950) diverse employees working in sundry capacities, from which, fifty (50) employees are high-level managers, one hundred and fifty (150) employees are supervisors, however, the remaining seven hundred and fifty (750) employees are hourly workers. American Sigma Motors identified the need of automating the organization in order to get more revenue by revamping their business processes in effective and efficient manner; therefore, they implemented Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System. But unfortunately, the results were converse to their expectations. There were a lot of reasons that contributed to failure of the system, but among them the most vital were lack of usability of the system among employees, business process change resistance, employees leaving job due to the implementation of the new system, problems in keeping the new system operational. To cater these problems the organization has decided to take following three steps: i. The organization has decided to call the external company (ERP consultants) to resolve some of the above problems by customizing the ERP System to make the system available and operational. ii. The organization has decided to develop a complete IT Department to maintain their software systems (ERP and any other) and provide 24/7 IT services. iii. The organization realized that most of the problems are due to lack of employees training of the ERP system, as the employees were facing problems to use the system, they are unable to properly utilize the system because the business processes were slightly changed, therefore, they were also leaving the job. To gratify these problems, the organization has decided to develop and implement an ERP system’s (IT) training program and made it compulsory to attend the training for all the employees. Therefore, the organization hired a consultant for provision of IT training to the nine hundred and fifty (950) employees. The organization is hopeful that the above given steps would be extremely successful, professional and helpful for increasing the revenue and performance of the employees. Especially the training program which the organization has planned to educate not only all the employees but they also planned to train Master Trainers, which would also educate the upcoming (any other) employees of the organization. The training program is scheduled to retain the employees, better output with better performance of the employees, align with organization goals, hence increasing revenue. Information Technology trainings help every employee of different levels at organization diversely, for example a worker may need to use the computer and software applications, however, relevant managers may required to determine the impact of latest technologies and how to adapt their business processes. Moreover, the middle management/officers are required using specialized software applications like Enterprise Resource Planning, Oracle etc. Therefore, the management is quite content and satisfied with their decision in order to increase productivity and competence in work processes. However, it was known to Information Technology Manager that the efficiency in performance of employees, business process improvement, increase in productivity of an organization and identification of modifications in the IT training program for improvement could only be recognized after evaluation of IT training program. It is responsibility of IT Manager to ensure that the training was relevant to all employees (lower workers, middle management and higher management), designed appropriate information for different levels of employees, applicable content has been delivered and employees are educated enough to use the new system, and the training provided high return over investment. Consider this, the IT Manager along with Human Resource department decided to conduct an evaluation of the IT training Program. Purpose of the Evaluation The purpose of this evaluation is to prove the impact of IT training program which is required to get buy-in of higher management for future funding. The evaluation of IT training program would measure the overall successfulness in terms of usability of the new system along with return over investment, high and low quality operations, employees’ performance along with their expectations and the lessoned learnt that would help the higher management to identify the requirement of follow up trainings. It would also help the higher management to determine whether the organization is going to achieve the core objective of increasing revenue. Stakeholders and Audiences This section will identify the stakeholders and the audience of the IT training program. The stakeholders and audiences include, the total employees of the organization are 950 that need to be trained by different levels of IT training with respect to their identified work, the consultants (trainers) and coordinators of IT training program. These are explained below: Primary Stakeholders IT Manager This officer has identified the need of training in the organization and also responsible for evaluation of the training to determine whether the trainers have conveyed the requisite information to the different trainees that help them using the computers, the new system and knowledge regarding new technologies. Master Trainers These officers are to be trained in order to further educate the upcoming employees (any other) on the subject of the new system. These individuals would be assessed that whether they are trained enough to further educate the employees. Senior Management The IT Manager along with HR Manager will present the evaluation report to these individuals with rationale on the impact of IT training program. On the basis of the report these individuals decide future course of actions regarding funding and revenue generation. Consultants These individuals are external to the organization, responsible for developing contents for the training program and educating the employees by providing different trainings that include basic IT training, specialized software application training (like ERP, SAP, Oracle etc) and latest technologies training to low level employees, officers (users of ERP) and the management/ managers of the organization respectively. These individuals are also responsible to educate the master trainers and revise the contents and the trainings based on results of the evaluation. Secondary Stakeholders Managers These individuals are responsible for developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on the basis of the evaluation of the training program and direct their respective department’s employee to use the new system. These individuals also reports to the higher management regarding performance of employees of their department. Lower-level Employees These individuals are responsible for using the computers and the software application by applying the knowledge they received from the training program. Their performance may be evaluated before and after the training program. Tertiary Stakeholders Coordinators Some of these individuals are internal and others are external to the organization, responsible for organizing the training program that includes the timings of the training program (when to start which training for whom employees), arrangement of meals/refreshments etc. The expenditure on these individuals along with organizing the training program has to be included in the evaluation. System Maintenance Providers These individuals are external to the organization and responsible for customization of the system according to the evaluation of the training program. Key Questions i. How much did the organization successful for achieving its core objective and goal of developing and implementing the training program? ii. Have the diverse employees’ of the organization received relevant training in terms of their usage of the computer, software application and latest technology education? iii. Have the IT training program met the requirements and expectations of the diverse employees? iv. Is the lesson learnt report in the evaluation of the IT training program indicates future modifications in the IT trainings implementation? v. How well did the employees recognize the usability of the new software system? Reference Russ-Eft, D. & Preskill, H. (2009). Evaluation in organizations: A systematic approach to enhancing learning, performance, and change. (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus. Read More