Abstract:

The sustainability a company is critically linked to its capability to cope with the challenges and continuous changes of today’s markets. This capability is related to the knowledge held at companies, and above all how this knowledge is organized. Hence, knowledge management is a key factor for the competitiveness and success of companies.
Knowledge exists within the people working at the company. Training activities can support and enhance the development of such employee knowledge. The importance of informal and non-formal training which occurs within an organizational context can be emphasized. Nevertheless, and perhaps equally important to implementing training activities, it is necessary to evaluate the training activities to measure their impact on employee behaviour and on company performance.
A consortium of seven European organizations has been assembled to improve an existing assessment tool called JAKIN. This tool was a pioneer and introduced qualitative and quantitative training assessment indicators, which also, at the same time, were used to evaluate strategic management and the capacity to generate intellectual capital.
The consortium will create the JAKIN II tool – to improve the initial version by including indicators that will allow companies to measure the impact of formal and non-formal training, and through this, become better equipped to manage knowledge.

Keywords:

Formal and informal training, knowledge management, training evaluation.