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The NHS is about to embark on the widescale introduction of performance‐related pay. A number of recent studies have seriously questioned the efficacy of merit pay. Utilizing the expectancy theory of motivation, explains why performance pay is unlikely to motivate NHS staff.

This paper seeks to argue that workplace learning evaluation theory and practice is still an emergent field and that this creates a number of challenges for practitioners and researchers alike.

This is a descriptive paper based on a critical review of existing approaches and the research literature.

While programme evaluation has a long history, workplace learning evaluation is yet to establish itself as a distinct field. This has a number of consequences including the lack of a single or settled view on how workplace learning should be evaluated or what specific aspects of learning should be investigated.

The need to demonstrate a return on investment in organisational learning is as pressing as ever. To become more effective training evaluation methods need to be grounded in a theory. This article aims to provide an informed perspective on the current state of workplace evaluation along with insights into how evaluation can be placed on firmer theoretical foundations in order to produce robust findings in a practitioner friendly way.

This paper provides original insights into the development of workplace evaluation approaches and the challenges the field faces.

Law enforcement officers enter police service usually sometime after their 21st birthday. They often remain in police service until they turn 65. To maintain their professional skills and re‐certify their licenses as law enforcement officers, they must complete in‐service training hours. The purpose of this study is to estimate the current number of law enforcement officers over 40 years old and to explore possible andragogical solutions to existing in‐service training methodologies.

The Police Officer Standard and Training (POST) organizations were contacted in all 50 States in a telephone survey.

Police training requirements vary widely between States. There are a large number of older law enforcement officers that require in‐service training. This population might be better served using andragogical training techniques.

Although this was a nationwide study, there were certain limitations that must be considered. Only State, county, and municipal law enforcement officers were included in this study. No federal law enforcement officers or agencies were included in this study.

The findings show the extent and amount of in‐service training that law enforcement agencies are required to provide their employees and will be of interest to those in that field.

This article seeks to review the current state of workplace learning evaluation, to set out the rationale for evaluation along with the barriers that practitioners face when seeking to assess the effectiveness of training and development. Finally, it aims to propose a scientifically robust and practitioner friendly approach to evaluation.

This article is based on a multi disciplinary literature review.

Despite the substantial investment in workplace learning there is a paucity of evaluation activity. There are a wide range of reasons for this including capacity and capability issues, lack of supportive organisational environment and a lack of effective measurement instruments. There is also a large research to practice gap. The starting point for evaluation approaches should be the needs of practitioners. Latest research on training suggests that effective evaluation approaches should adopt a stakeholder and systems approach and collect corroborative data.

This article presents research findings, based on a multidisciplinary literature review, on the factors that inhibit effective workplace learning evaluation, sets out a novel evaluation framework and approach, grounded in a conceptual model of workplace learning.

The findings seek to assist practitioners such as learning and development professionals undertake more robust and efficient evaluations. The article also addresses the research to practice gap.

This article presents a novel approach to workplace learning evaluation.

This paper seeks to address current limitations in approaches to training evaluation by presenting a conceptual model of work‐based learning and an associated evaluation framework.

The model and framework presented in this paper are based on a critical review of current approaches to learning evaluation and insights from learning transfer research and programme theory.

This paper sets out a conceptual model of workplace learning based on five elements: a pre‐learning stage, the trigger (need) for learning, the learning event, application of learning and the impact of learning. A linked criterion evaluation framework is also described. It is proposed that this provides a scientifically robust but practitioner friendly framework for workplace learning evaluation.

While most organisations wish to evaluate the effectiveness of their investment in employee training and development, few do. One of the barriers to effective learning evaluation is the failure to ground approaches in a contemporary and comprehensive model of workplace learning. The model and framework set out in this paper aim to assist evaluation by addressing this gap in a practitioner friendly way.

This paper sets out a novel, flexible and comprehensive conceptual model of workplace learning along with an innovative approach to training evaluation that addresses limitations in existing approaches. It is hoped that this will contribute to the debate on appropriate evaluation methods and assist practitioners to undertake evaluation in a more credible manner.

This paper aims to briefly review the current state of and rationale for workplace training evaluation, explain the barriers that prevent wide scale and effective evaluation and provide practitioners with a novel training evaluation approach.

The article is based on a critical review of current approaches to and literature on training evaluation and the author's own research into the impact of learning on NHS productivity.

Whilst national governments stress the importance of workplace skills development as a central element of economic growth and organizations invest substantial amounts in training, very few private firms or public sector organizations actually review learning's impact on individuals, teams or organizational results.

This paper proposes that a range of factors inhibit effective training evaluation. These include the complexity of workplace learning and, crucially, weaknesses in current evaluation processes and tools. In response, the author sets out a novel systematic evaluation process aimed at assisting practitioners in meeting these challenges.

The approach builds on the economic theory of productivity to create a metric of costs and benefits to allow organizations to assess the impact of learning. It is hoped the approach will firstly, contribute to the debate about how training should be evaluated; secondly, bridge the gap between academic research and practitioner needs and finally, provide a scientifically robust but practitioner friendly means of evaluation.

In this chapter we discuss the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of public health interventions where there are combined, and potentially conflicting, objectives of increasing total population health and reducing unfair health inequalities in the population. Our focus is on identifying appropriate health inequality measures in this context to quantify the impacts of interventions on unfair health inequality and, where necessary, analyse equity-efficiency trade-offs between improving total population health and reducing unfair health inequality. We recognise that this requires a number of important social value judgements to be made, and so prefer measures that facilitate transparency about these social value judgements. We briefly summarise the literature on health inequality and health-related social welfare functions, and conclude that while valuable it is not entirely suitable for our purpose. We borrow instead from the wider literature on economic inequality, highlighting how this translates to a health setting, and identify appropriate measures for CEA. We conclude with a stylised example illustrating how we would apply a battery of dominance rules and social welfare indices to evaluate the health distributions associated with two hypothetical health interventions.