The Money for Training Is Leaving and Nobody's Watching It Go

How much does an organization spend on training every year — and how much of that spend actually changes performance? In the first episode of a new series walking through the full Kirkpatrick Model, Vanessa Milara Alzate makes the financial case for evaluation: the real cost of turnover, under-training, and the mistakes that happen when people are technically trained but nothing changes on the job.

She traces the model back to its origins in the 1950s with Dr. Don Kirkpatrick, through its evolution under Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick, to where it stands today — not a training checklist, but a system for connecting effort to results across any initiative, not just training.

Takeaways: why most organizations measure learning instead of performance, the real financial cost of turnover and under-training, the origin of the four levels — reaction, learning, behavior, results — why level three is where the real work happens, and the one question every leader should ask before reaching for training as the fix.

This episode kicks off a seven-part series on the Kirkpatrick Model — and back-to-school season is a good excuse to pick up Building a Culture of Evaluation and join Vanessa's live Book Club discussion this fall. Learn more at kirkpatrickpartners.com.

Enterprise Performance Intelligence (EPI) Maturity Assessment  Think your organization is measuring impact? Most aren't.

The EPI Maturity Assessment helps you quickly identify where you stand—and what's needed to better connect learning to performance and results.

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Building a Culture of Evaluation Order the book behind the Culture of Evaluation framework and updated Kirkpatrick Model. The book comes with a Companion Guide to help support you on the journey.

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Kirkpatrick Learning and Performance Center of Excellence Certification builds capability. Accreditation builds systems. The Kirkpatrick Certified Organization accreditation recognizes organizations that have embedded the Kirkpatrick Four Levels® into how they actually operate — through governance, SOPs, feedback loops, and cross-functional accountability. If your evaluation capability would disappear when a key person leaves, this is the credential designed to fix that. Founding Organization status is now open — first year of annual maintenance waived for inaugural cohort members.

👉 Learn more and apply

Not ready to apply yet because you need to build the systems? Grab the SOPs. We're building a library of Kirkpatrick-standard SOPs — governance frameworks, evaluation procedures for all four levels, planning templates, and implementation guides — so you can build your infrastructure before you apply.