Abstract

Every month U.S. companies spend millions of dollars for training. This money is used for company training staffs to conduct in-house programs, programs conducted by outside agencies and a variety of materials, films and consultation. Most organizations regard their training effort as an investment in people and in the future. This is one investment, however, which usually escapes careful and systematic scrutiny. Training budgets tend to expand in periods of company prosperity and to shrink dramatically in periods of low profits. Such decisions tend to be made more on the basis of a nebulous "feeling" about training's value than on the basis of any hard data about what trade-offs are being made. In many companies training is given much lip service, but is treated as a second-class activity whenever it competes for recognition, representation and status. At least part of this inconsistency stems from the fact that no key executive can actually tell how effectively his company's training dollars are being spent.