Purposes, personnel, material, methods and evaluation are the five elements of training systems used for the development of human resources. Combining these five elements in ways that are cost effective and within established budgetary limitations is the challenge that is faced by all business owners. We hope to provide an overview of these elements and suggest ways to develop programs that work and are affordable.

1. Purposes. What is to be accomplished? These are desired or intended results, goal, aims or objectives. They may be very general and simple in form or they may be detailed and complex; or, more likely, they will be some combination or fall somewhere in between.
2. Personnel. Who will be involved? These are the people involved in the process; students or learners, presenters (trainers, facilitators, instructors) and support staff.
3. Material. What "things" will be used? This is the aggregate of things used or needed for the undertaking: instructional materials, equipment, facilities, etc.
4. Methods. What procedures will be used? This refers to the program’s manner or mode: the orderly, logical or systematic way of instruction or presentation. You may utilize a variety of methods to achieve different purposes, with different staff using different materials.
5. Evaluation. How do we judge our accomplishments? What benefits were achieved and at what cost? This involves assessing how well the goals or purposes were achieved and determining the value of the benefits obtained. Evaluation is an on-going activity and interacts with the other elements of any training being delivered. As data is obtained and assessed, judgments will be made and revisions begun.

As you go about developing a training program, whether it be internal, external or a combination of both, you need to make decisions about each of the elements described above.

Most systems fall into one of two categories:

1. Those that serve the organization and deal primarily with developing a more effective workforce;
2. Those oriented toward the needs of the individual, which include professional and personal growth (which we hope will eventually serve the needs of the organization.)

Objectives can be stated in behavioral terms to provide specific direction to instructors and learners, but they can also be effective when agreed to in general terms between mutually trusting employees and managers. For example, an effective approach to learning is to allow an employee to pursue self-directed learning activities with the goal of implementing the results. In this case the manager serves as a coach and facilitator of the learning.

With adults, it is often unnecessary to spell out in great detail what will be achieved. Rather, it is usually sufficient to indicate the topic of the program and allow the managers and learners to best determine which behaviors should be altered as a result of their new knowledge. Remember, training programs may have purposes that range from merely creating awareness to actually modifying behaviors.

Improving job performance is a typical purpose for a program. This benefits both the organization and the individual. The organization needs to determine which goals and objectives need to be met in order to improve production or services and to effectively facilitate this process. These programs should also be closely tied to other human resource practices, such as annual performance reviews and healthy employee-manager relationships.

Another approach to reaching corporate goals and objectives can be the formation of task forces whose primary assignment takes precedence over the secondary goal of learning. Such "real world" learning can be highly effective and the corporate results dramatic. It does, however, require careful selection of the task force members and their coach or sponsor.