“Happy sheets” – we must do better!

We know what “happy sheets” are, right? Those feedback forms given out at the end of the training that ask participants what they thought of the training and the trainer.

It has been the norm in the field of training since cave men and cave women were roaming the earth.

Of course, it is important to know if a training session went well or not but if you think about it for a second, happy sheets have a few crazy components. Here are just a few…

👎 You pay huge sums of money to bring in experts in their field to develop the capability of people who are not experts in that field. And then you ask the non-experts to give feedback on the experts! How mad is that? You don’t hire a fitness coach and then give feedback to the coach on how fit they are!
👎 Trainers go out of their way to be nice to people so they don’t get any negative comments on the happy sheets. Their job is not to be nice but to challenge people’s thinking in a constructive way. Training is not a popularity contest!
👎 We make the forms anonymous – so if a participant does have anything useful to share, we cannot follow up and explore their comments because we don’t know who wrote it.

So here are a few things to do differently that might be more useful. Yes, some may take some effort but hey, do you want improvement or do you want to tick a box?

✅ Construct your training programmes in ways that makes it possible for the experts to observe the non-experts and give them feedback as part of the programme.
✅ Ensure participants have clear learning outcomes for attending in the first place that can be tracked over time.
✅ Observe the training yourself so you know for yourself whether it is hitting the mark or needs changing in some way.

I’m not expecting a revolution overnight but if happy sheets are the only form of evaluation used for a training programme, something is wrong. We can do better!