Measuring the RoI on Entry Level Training Programs

Organisations spend a fortune on training fresh recruits from campus (as well as on other organisational learning initiatives which is such a fad in this 'knowledge economy'), but I wonder whether they ever measure the return on investment that they get from these trainings?
Even though I do not have empirical data to prove my case, I would safely bet that most organisations do not measure their returns on trainings and more importantly do not even have a methodology to do so. I perceive this as a serious faultine in an organisation's HR and learning processes, because the organisation is fundamentally not measuring whether the huge amount of money, time and resources spent on training are contributing to organisational effectiveness and growth. What is the point of training if the employee is not able to contribute to the bottom line of an organisation? I am convinced that there are serious faults with the way training is being imparted currently, especially to entry level employees (I had touched upon this point in a previous post), because there is a glaring disconnect between actual project contribution of an employee and the training that is imparted.
Why does this happen?
The primary reason for this has to be the organisational design - with different departments handling a 'resource' at different points of time and working in silos. Almost every company that I know has a dedicated training department which takes care of the entire training initiatives, then there is the HR department which liasons between the employees and the training department and finally there are the operational departments where the employees actually work. Now what happens when an entry level employee joins the organisation? The HR folks handle all the onboarding formalities and pass the new employees on to the training department. The training department 'owns' the freshers for the stipulated training time which could range from one month to a maximum of three months. In the mean time, the HR department will liason with the various operations departments to understand the openings available for freshers in various projects and will decide on a resourcing plan. Once the training period is over, the fresh recruits will be 'released' to their allocated operations departments. That's the end of the story - the training department will flaunt their 'metrics' on the number of recruits they trained each period, the number of recruits who obtained excellent rating in the evaluation exams, number of hours training was conducted and a host of other 'performance indicators' that will help the training manager draw up colourful charts, the HR department on the other hand will also draw up their metrics on the number of positions filled with freshers, number of offers vs. number of actual joiners etc. Are these metrics and measures important and of any value? Is the measure of the number of people trained or number of hours training was imparted of any true value to the organisation? My answer is no - these are all dead statistics, numbers which might look good on a presentation, but giving no real insight into the actual impact on organisational performance. If the actual effectiveness of trainings are to be meausured, the training and HR teams should move beyond their current boundaries and look into the operations departments for data on the impact of the trained employees on project delivery. Post-training, if majority of the employees have not been able to contribute positively to a project or if their skills are being eroded, then that does not speak volumes about the effectiveness of the training. I am also convinced that if organisations start measuring the actual impact of training and more importantly learning on organisational performance, they will even rethink some of the training strategies they have in place. Thus my argument is that organisations need to meausre the returns they have on trainings and need a complete rethink about the KPIs that are set for the training department, the measure of a good training department is not in the number of people they were able to train, but in the contribution of the training to organisation's financial performance. But that cannot happen as long as the various departments work in isolation of each other and lack systems thinking. Well there is only one important measure of success for any department in an organisation, the direct or indirect impact that the department's activities have on the financial performance of an organisation.

Organisations as Schools for it's employees

Most organisations that I have seen (or heard about in first person experience) do not have a robust employee development program. I maintain the proposition that it is the responsibility of each organisation to cater to the career development of it's employees - it's more like an extension of the guiding philosophy of an educational institution. A true school should progressively look at moulding it's students, provide an environment conducive to reflection and learning and drive the students to realise their inner potential. To say that corporate organisations would do well to adopt this philosophy might sound a bit far fetched, but let us examine the idea bit more before completely rejecting it.
In the knowledge industry space there cannot be an argument on the fact that the cerebral power of an organisation's employees is the only true value proposition. People make the difference - people can break or make projects or products. The most fascinating aspect about human potential is that it's limitless - the depth that the human mind and brain fathoms, the ideas that originate from it and the power of human initiative, will and enterprise makes it may be the world's most valuable renewable resource! And the best part is that your employees do not depreciate, rather they appreciate with age and experience. The Law of Scarcity is one of the fundamental principles of economics - the value of an item is directly proportional to it's scarcity - human potential describes the extreme case of the Law of Scarcity where there is only a single unit of the product available in market - each of your employee is unique.
But how many organisations realise this fact and put a premium on the realisation and development of it's most valuable limitless resource?. Think of the possibilities - if you provide an environment that is conducive to the creative growth of your employees you could have an organisation that continuously reinvents itself and ride on the enterprise and human potential of your employees.
Another analogy is that to gardening. The intent of a gardener might be to make money selling the produce of his garden, but the only way he can do that is to attend to the flowers in his garden, nurture them, provide them with the best conditions for growth and reap the benefit. This is exactly what organisations in the knowledge space need to do. (I need to point out here that the Indian IT company MindTree's chief executive is called a Gardener!).
So it is my staunch belief that the adoption of a philosophy similar to educational institutions will only benefit corporate organisations. We need organisations that put a premium on moulding the thought and potential of it's employees. I believe that organisations are still obsessed with Customers and Processes while forgetting that the presence of motivated and driven employees are prerequisites to both of these measures. I urge you to just reflect on one thought - human potential that is limitless, renewable, appreciating and indomitable - what else matches up to it?