Valuing the investment in organizational training

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a better methodology for evaluating the value of corporate training to make it easier to compare with other organizational investments. The paper also seeks to propose and demonstrate how “time value of money” and “hurdle rate”, which are significant components of traditional investment valuation methods, can and should be incorporated into the valuation of organization training.Design/methodology/approach – The training investment evaluation methods most commonly used by the training professionals were identified and compared to investment evaluation techniques used to measure the value of other investments made to improve and expand business activities.Findings – The survey of training investment evaluation literature showed that there are two major problems in the methods utilized by the training professionals. One of the problems was associated with the measurement and monetization of costs and benefits of the training activity. The other was the non‐c...