Why Follow Levels When You Can Build Bridges

In Presenting Learning, Tony Bingham and Tony Jeary ask workplace learning and performance (WLP) professionals to speak the language of business and contribute to business results. Their advice includes connecting our WLP work with the business opportunities facing our organizations and executives.

Bingham and Jeary advocate WLP professionals to get to and stay at the table, “where all strategic and important business decisions are discussed.” In reviewing Presenting Learning’s lessons, it occurred to me that bridges could be built between WLP professionals, our measurement and evaluation practices,
and the organizations that we serve.

Changing the traditional measurement levels discussion toward a bridge-building analogy sparked several new perspectives regarding what it is that WLP professionals accomplish and what can happen when we think outside of the classroom.

Attend any WLP conference or read any of the measurement and evaluation literature, and the conversation ultimately turns to levels. Kirkpatrick’s four-level work, based on Katzell’s four-step measurement approach, or some variation, often dominates the discussion.

The discussion shifts subtly from how the WLP program aligns and attunes with the organization and what can be accomplished with the output and outcomes, toward how many measurement levels have been, could have been, or should be applied.