The Occupational Health and Safety Training Department of a global research and development organization was facing a US Federal audit, including a requirement to report on their evaluations of their own trainings. While they had conducted end-of-session evaluations of most of their training classes, they had not made any prior attempt to assess the impact their trainings had on later performance.

We suggested a combination approach:

1. Conducting an impact-level evaluation on a few sample trainings, and
2. Systematize and Analyze the over-all body of evaluation data that already existed.

Our approach for the impact study was to utilize internal customer perceptions. We designed a survey to measure their customers' satisfaction with past trainings, as well as the customers' perceived level of comfort with their own departments' safety behaviors. In addition to revealing that there was a high level of customer satisfaction with the safety trainings in question, there were two specific findings at the level of "impact." The department had recently moved to providing safety trainings on line, as opposed to in classrooms. The study revealed that while reported satisfaction with the training itself remained high, and there were cost savings for the company, comfort levels with actual safety behaviors decreased for trainings that required physical demonstration, suggesting that this class of trainings had better impact when delivered in the classroom. Additionally, the study indicated that there was a correlation between confidence in safety at the company and higher employee productivity - a link that the training department could use as an indicator of its own performance and value.

The key deliverable for the audit was a sizable Safety Training Evaluation Report that impressed the US agency auditors and earned the company "best in class" kudos.