Jac Fitz-enz
On how it all started…
In 1969, I went to work for Wells Fargo Bank in the training department, and that is what got me into the profession. I worked at the bank for several years. Then I went to a computer company as head of human resources and, eventually, in 1980 started and ran the Saratoga Institute until 2002. My involvement with training has always been personal because that is where I started.
I got into the predictive side about two years ago: I had just finished about a third of a series of reports called the Workforce Intelligence Report, which is basically a best practices report, and I looked at this thing and I said, OK, what else is there? We can’t just keep reporting what other people are doing—whether good or bad—and really advance the profession. We’ve got to evolve from reporting the basic transactional metrics of 30 years ago and benchmarking and reciting best practices to something else. What is that? To me that was predictability. That pushed me to ask, how do we become predictive? Whether we are talking about making an investment in training or making an investment in something else, all resources are limited, and there is competition for them. So, if we can get into predictability and begin to show that an investment in this or that will give us the kind of return we want, we will run our organizations much more effectively, we will be less frustrated, employees will be more motivated, and so forth. That is my mental model. To do that you cannot just take a given isolated function like training or any other function and say we ought to do this. I think you really have to understand the environment in which you are working, which means you have to do a major, comprehensive, in-depth scan of the external and the internal world in which you live. And then look at that and ask, “How does that affect the human structural and relational capital of our organization and how do those things interact?” All I am trying to say here is that human and structural issues interrelate, and you can’t just go out and run a training program or any other intervention around the human side without asking yourself: “What about the structural side of the organization? What about the relational capital of people outside the organization, such as competitors, customers, and vendors?” It is a much more complex world than I think most people want to spend time thinking about. If you do not have this understanding as a foundation, then anything you do—whether a staffing strategy, a compensation strategy, or a development strategy—has got to have limited success. And that’s what brought me into predictability. We built this model called “Human Capital Management 21.”
On how training evaluation has changed over the years…
In 1969, the words measurement and value were not even in the training lexicon. There has been considerable movement in a relatively small number of people or functions or departments, and some of them are doing wonderful work. I was just with a retailer a week ago that has done some terrific work in showing the value added by the training and development function to the organization, tracing it all the way from improvement in skill and knowledge to a business result, a financial result. So, some people are doing tremendous work, there are just not enough of them. Overall I would guess 25 to 30 percent are doing something significant in the training and evaluation field, but that leaves out 70 percent. You can look at the situation as a glass half full or half empty, but that is my view. There has been about a 25- to 30-percent build-up in evaluation in the last 30 years.
On how executives view learning and development and investment in it...
You can take people who have had practical experience working in a line job, and you can teach them the fundamentals of adult learning. They do not have to be experts in adult learning to run a training function, they simply have to understand a little of the theory behind it so they know when to champion one approach over another. I think it is much easier for them to learn those kinds of fundamentals and then rely on a professional to actually design, develop, and deliver the product and use their line experience to provide guidance.
On why we still see such a low investment in training measurement and evaluation within organizations and how can we facilitate more investment in the future…
If I were running a training function today, I would insist that the people who are playing professional roles—the designers and deliverers of training—go out and spend at least six months in a line job someplace so they understand the day-to-day pressures of people in those kinds of jobs and that the world is not driven by a training program. In fact, a training program can be seen as an intrusion to getting the job done. I think they would then come back with a different kind of attitude, and we could begin to build around a more realistic attitude of why we develop people. We do not do it because we like to train. If it does not show value, then we should get rid of it.
As I see it, as a profession, most trainers really don’t like measurement. They love to design, develop, and deliver courses and they like to get some positive feedback at Level 1 or 2, but they really don’t care to measure and evaluate their work. It is not in their DNA I guess. This is unfortunate because, as a result of that, training and development usually is one of the first functions out the door during a downturn, which makes perfect sense if you look at it from the standpoint of someone outside, such as an investor in the company or management. If we don’t explain to people in terms that they can understand and appreciate (creating value by improving skills, knowledge, and attitudes of the workforce), then it really makes sense to get rid of the function or at least downplay it for a while. This is the fundamental thing: We’ve got to accept the fact that we are in a business—whether for-profit or not-for-profit does not make any difference—we are spending money and there has got to be a return on that money, otherwise it is waste. Unfortunately, so many people in training functions, for a variety of reasons, do not want to do that. As a group and as a profession we have got to turn things around, and we have to get a much greater percentage of people doing some level of quantitative analysis and evaluation.
On what the future holds for measurement and evaluation…
When I finished this thing on predictability I thought, OK, I have done it now, I have made my mark, this is as far as you can go, predictability is the end of the trail. And if you learn how to be predictive in the investment in training or any other function, that’s great. That’s as far as you can go. I had no sooner finished than people started talking to me about the next step. I now realize there is another evolutionary step, which is what we are calling data integration. All this means is that you look at data at any level and ask yourself “How does this relate to other data in the organization?” If you had the balanced scorecard in mind as a model, you know learning is at the first level, process at the second level, customers at the third level, and finance at the fourth level.
Data integration is the next step, and where it applies to development is, of course, if you do something at the learning level, you should be able to track it through and directly say it is going to touch this kind of human behavior at the process level, which is then going to lead to customer reactions and so on. We are starting to develop algorithms to do that. That, to me, is the next phase.
About Jac Fitz-enz
Jac Fitz-enz, PhD, is a pioneer in human capital strategic analysis and measurement. After holding senior corporate human resource positions, he founded the Saratoga Institute and developed the first international human resource benchmarking service. He later launched the Human Capital Source and the Workforce Intelligence Institute to take human capital valuation to the next level. Named by the Society for Human Resource Management as one of the 50 most influential people in human capital management, two of his books were selected by SHRM for the “Book of the Year” Award: Human Value Management: The Value-Adding Human Resource Management Strategy for the 1990s (1990) and The ROI of Human Capital: Measuring the Economic Value of Employee Performance (2009). He was honored in ASTD’s “Legends” series at the International Conference in 2005.