Background and Rationale
Ersk Chemical Limited is located in Chicago. It specializes in the production of Chlorine among other related chemicals. The company has 950 employees each with different skills depending on their job requirement. 50 of the employees are upper-level managers. 150 of the employees are supervisors while the remaining 750 are hourly workers. Ersk Chemical Limited has had safety related incidents over the years. Since Ersk is a large scale production company of chemicals, the management has recently decided to implement a safety training program for all their employees. The management came to this decision with the aim of reducing the occurrence of safety related incidents. The training program is not the first that the employees have undergone, and the management is concerned whether the results will be different this time.
There is a specific incident that has prompted the management to decide that all the employees should be undertake the safety training program. A few weeks ago while one of the supervisors was overseeing a bulk delivery of corrosion inhibitor, approximately 200 gallons of phosphoric acid were unloaded to a storage tank containing sodium Hypochlorite. The chemical reaction resulted to the production of chlorine gas that three employees and a supervisor were exposed to. The storage area of the company is not equipped for chemical production hence it is not as well ventilated as the production area which resulted to a lot of damages. The employees were treated for severe throat irritation and chest pains. The residents who lived half a mile from the company also had to be evacuated until the response team had conducted air sampling to determine the amount of chlorine gas in the air.
The incident resulted to the company suffering large amount of losses in term of repairs and legal issues. It had a drastic effect on the company’s profits. The management realized that it had focused a lot on satisfying its legal obligations and not on its employees’ safety and the environment. The consequences of this particular incident especially the loss of profits has resulted to the management deciding on a safety training program for all employees.
The program’s goal is to ensure all employees understand the safety precautions they should take in the company and how their mistakes would result to fatal accidents. In order to achieve all objectives, the training program must address all safety issues regarding a chemical plant. All employees must attend a training program and to ensure this the management has set aside time, and they are ready to suffer the low production consequences in the meantime. A new safety manager has also been hired since the company has a need for a fresh set of eyes in terms of their safety policies and regulations. The new safety manager has been conducting research to understand the causes of all safety incidents that have occurred over the years. The new safety manager also checked the company’s records to get information on all the safety training programs that the employees have undertaken. The manager realized that he needed to come up with better solutions on the safety issues. He wanted to ensure that the safety training program contained all the relevant information and that it would deal with all safety concerns, unlike the previous programs. The management also needed assurance that the training program would improve the company’s profits. To do this, the safety manager decided to conduct an evaluation of the workplace training program.
Purpose of the Evaluation
The evaluation’s purpose is to measure the training program’s effectiveness. It is meant to evaluate whether all the 950 employees benefited from the program. It should also show the financial changes that resulted after the training program was completed. The evaluation outcomes establish whether there will be any need for further training or changes in the safety policies and regulations. It will also show direct or indirect relation in the decrease of safety incidents, increase in profits for the organization and the training program.
Stakeholders and Audiences
The primary stakeholders are the ones who have a direct impact on the program.
Safety Manager is the individual responsible for coming up with the program and has also identified the need to carry out an evaluation. The evaluation results determine the program’s effectiveness and identify areas that may require a change.
Senior Management are the individuals who are most concerned with the financial impacts of the training program to the organization. They are also answerable to the board of directors who require that the program will result to a decrease in the number of safety incidents and legal issues.
Program Designer is the person responsible for developing a training program under the safety manager’s instructions. He ensures that the program is in line with the organization’s safety policies and regulations. The evaluation results might result to changes in the training program.
Secondary stakeholders are indirectly affected by the results of this evaluation.
Supervisors are the individuals who enforce the implemented safety policies and regulations as taught in the training program. They are also responsible for making reports on the increase or decrease of safety incidents, as well as, employees’ productivity.
All employees are responsible for upholding the safety policies as well as create a safe working environment. They are required to follow the instructions given during the training program.
Tertiary Stakeholders
Government has created safety policies for such companies dealing with dangerous chemicals. The evaluation will show that the company has taken all the required measures to abide by the set rules and regulations.
Evaluation Questions
- How well did the employees receive and understand the information presented in the safety training program?
- How accurately was the content in training program designed to be in line with the safety policies and regulations?
- Were all the safety issues related to the company addressed in the safety training program?
- Has there been an increase or decrease of safety incidents and accidents after employees undertook the training program?
- How did the training program impact the levels of productivity in an organization?
- What have the results of this evaluation shown about safety training programs and how will it be implemented in the future?
Evaluation Design
The use of one-shot evaluation design is the most effective for this evaluation. The design is simple, cost friendly and also can provide results that when analyzed can lead to more accurate results, unlike other methods. The evaluation design method involves techniques that gather data in qualitative and quantitative methods. The resulting data is accurate, can be easily generalized and will give the best information on useful the safety training program is (Russ-Eft & Preskill, 2009).
Internal validity is most relevant in studies that try to establish a causal or cause-effect relationship. To ensure internal validity, the experiment and the methods used will avoid confounding. The research will allow the choice of alternate explanations of something. It will be possible to explain more than one variable in the study at the same time.
External validity is harder to achieve since it deals with how the research results can be used to generalize other situations. In order to ensure this validity, the data used in the research must be varied. Collecting data from just a small set will limit the results such that they cannot be used to come up with generalizations in other similar situations.
Data Collection Method
When selecting a data collection method one must consider the individual method’s strengths, weaknesses, and appropriateness. For this evaluation plan, the most reliable method for collecting data is observation and questionnaires. The method will give information on what the employees know about the previous training programs. The asking of questions must not exactly be in a written form. The questions are meant to let the respondents give their best understanding of the situation (Pawar, 2004). The researcher may end up with a lot of information from which they can filter to get what is valid and what is not for the evaluation.
When considering the methods to use to collect data one must think about the degree of intrusiveness the evaluation can tolerate and the extent to which data already exists in an organization. Among other methods, the use of archival data was considered. The method gives a chance to collect data in an unobtrusive way (Pawar, 2004). The data collected from the organization’s records may not be valid, reliable or relevant as compared to when other methods are used.
Drawing a Sample
The method used to select the individuals will be based on their job position in the organization and how often they deal with the chemical products in the company. It will be required to have a view of the different supervisors who oversee different operations in the organization.
Analyzing Evaluation Data
Several techniques can be used to analyze data whether qualitative or quantitative. The data in this evaluation is both qualitative and quantitative and will hence require a keen and more accurate technique to be analyzed. Data will be analyzed depending on its format, for instance, numerical or depending on the method of gathering technique used for instance survey or questionnaires. A group of people will also be involved in this analyzes to ensure that the result are not biased on the manager’s personal beliefs (Rabinowitz & Fawcett, 2014).
Estimating Return on Investment
In order to calculate the return on investment emanating from the training program, calculations on the costs from the development of the training program, training coordinator salary, employees salary for the one day training program, the cost of meals, materials and facilities costs. Analysis of prior productivity and profit figures should get compared with figures after the training program to show for correlation. Below is a table of hypothetical return on investment calculations to illustrate the techniques.
Program Benefits
Company profits after training $150,500
Company Profits before training $70,500 per week
Increase in profits $80,000 per week
Accidents and Legal Issues before training 18 injuries per 3 months
Accidents and Legal issues after training 3 injury per 3 months
Decrease in injuries after training 83.33%
Costs to the organization per injury (average) $1,000
Decrease in injury related costs per year $60,000
Total Annual Benefits $140,000
Cost Summary
Facility costs for training $5,000
Program materials $2,500
Meals/Refreshments (1 meal per employee) $9,500
Participant salaries $95,000
Coordination/Evaluation $1,200
Total Costs $113,200
Cost Benefit Ratio
Total Benefits $140,000 / Total Costs $113,200 = 1.237:1
Return on Investment
Total Benefits $140,000 – Total Costs - $113, 200 x 100 = 23.67%
Total Costs - $113, 200
References
Pawar, M. S. (2004). Data Collecting Methods and Experiences: A Guide for Social Researchers. Berkshire, UK: New Dawn Press.
Rabinowitz, P., & Fawcett, S. B. (2014). Section 5. Collecting and Analyzing Data. Retrieved from http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/evaluate/evaluate-community-interventions/collect-analyze-data/main
Russ-Eft, D., & Preskill, H. (2009). Evaluation in Organizations: A Systematic Approach To Enhancing Learning, Performance, and Change (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
