Charles, I absolutely agree with you that employee performance is what organisations should be focussing their evaluation efforts on.

This seems like "hit over the head" common sense, but my own recent (and brief) experience in a public sector organisation suggests that common sense isn't the most valued trait out there in the big bad world.

This organisation has the standard formal training set-up: corporate training programme, skills matrix, personal development plans etc. Rather than change the world in a day, I decided to work with what was there. For example, I redesigned the development plan so that, rather than have them record "I want to do X course", it prompted them to define what the team, department or org benefits going on that course would be. And I highlighted that any formal learning activity should be followed up with a conversation between manager and staff member to discuss how the team etc. would best benefit from the experience.

However, I had to fight like a dog to get this through because "it will take too much time". And this wasn't the L&D or HR department saying this, or even the staff members or line managers, but the senior team. The very people who, I would have thought, would have been the most appreciative of trying to encourage staff to think in terms of benefits to the business.

Harold, I think it's a nice idea to have all courses as voluntary, but I'm not sure how practical this is. Certainly, "developmental" courses it makes more sense, but for roles with technical or compliance considerations, I think there is still a very good argument to be made for mandatory training.