A study on measuring return on investment of a key account management training program

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) in training and development and performance improvement has consistently earned a place among the critical issues in the Human Resource Development (HRD) field. HRD plays a significant role in supporting and driving a continuous improvement culture. Training can be a powerful building block in allowing a business to achieve its goals, indicating that it must be seen as a strategy and not an event. The research problem will be evaluating the return on investment of a training program conducted at one of the main garment exporter in Sri Lanka. The study followed a cost-effective conceptual framework of training evaluation developed by Doucouliagos and Sgro [3]. The model is consisted by four sequential steps, commencing with collecting data, pre- and post training exploration of performance, linking performance outcomes to training and, finally, the calculations of return on investment (ROI). The final research findings indicate that the training program has given significantly high ROI and has led to better customer satisfaction and enhancing other key business performance measures. Also it is found that quality of the training program led to better acquisition of the skills relevant to the training program. Major limitations of this study are identified as calculating the monetary value of benefits, Impact of other uncontrollable factors, Time constraints and Availability of data.