Where are they now: catching up with some alumni from the first five years of Training's New Guard

T+D, May, 2004 by Jennifer J. Salopek

For the U.S. Army garrison in Fort Carson, Colorado, Hodges helped set up a structure to collect and analyze data to measure ROI of training interventions. For that work, she received a medal of excellence from the garrison commander. Her work in forecasting ROI for multiple training programs at Nextel Communications is the subject of a joint presentation with her client at the ASTD Conference this month.

Although Hodges's primary focus is on ROI, she views herself as a performance consultant. "Evaluation has the unique opportunity to play the role of facilitator between stakeholders, instructional designers, trainers, and end users," she says. "I always ask the "So what?" questions: What performance improvement is being sought? What does it mean for the business?" Hodges notes that evaluation doesn't have to wait until a program is completed; you can ask questions up front to ensure that a program will work. That's the main difference between her two main services: An ROI forecast is developed before a program is offered, while an impact study takes place after the fact. She defines forecasting as "anticipating the expected benefits of a program and weighing them against its costs," and notes that such forecasting is often less expensive for an organization than an impact study. In doing a forecast on one Nextel program, she showed that the company could not realize positive ROI due to its costs; the company decided not to use its vendor and to develop the program in-house.

"The folks there are very excited, and have used this information to make major decisions. The forecasts have gotten them thinking about objectives, and we've done them for three more programs since then. Many of my clients still don't know that you can do this, and they are pleasantly surprised at the results," Hodges says. "Nextel will never be the same."

Her first book, Linking Learning and Performance, was published by Butterworth-Heinmann in 2000. She wrote it at night and on weekends while working at Verizon. Her second, Building Support for Evaluation, co-authored with Jack and Patty Phillips, has just been issued. "The field is moving so fast," she comments. "My first drafts look so different from the second." Even so, Hodges believes that there has now been enough demonstrable success in the ROI field to be convincing. She notes that the case studies presented at ASTD's annual ROI Network conference are "more and better" every year, as "customers cry out for accountability."

Although she took the leap "with heart in mouth at first," Hodges says she now loves working for herself. She appreciates the time she spends with her grandchildren; she has two with another on the way. She is trademarking the return-on-expectation process she developed while at Verizon, describing it as a form of "expert estimation that's an option to use in addition to or in place of other evaluations." Although there are many more tools and technologies that permit practitioners to design their own measurement systems, "it's the adherence to the principles of isolating and comparing that has made evaluation stand the test of time."