1 D o you think organisations should adopt a return on investment approach? Phillips (2005), in response to the regular calls for a way of measuring the contribution of training, has developed an approach that, he argues, provides good evidence of the payback for the expenditure of the training budget.

First, there is a requirement for effective evaluation planning. This entails setting clear objectives at five levels:

1 reaction and satisfaction objectives;

2 learning objectives;

3 application objectives;

4 impact objectives;

5 return on investment objectives.

There is then a need to collect data that are pertinent to each of the objectives. Hard data include output quality, volume, cost and time. Soft data include job and customer satisfaction.

Data are collected via questionnaires, tests, on‑the-

job observations and performance monitoring as appropriate.