Findings (Recommendations)

Over the past decade, the Bank has financed approximately $720 million in training annually, over 90 percent through projects and the remainder through the WBI.

Most Bank-financed training was found to result in individual participant but only about half resulted in substantial changes to workplace behavior or enhanced development capacity.

Making the leap from individual learning to workplace performance outcomes and, subsequently, to development capacity impact requires both good training design and an appropriate organizational and institutional context in which to apply the learning from training.

Training success is predicated on adequate design.

Much of the Bank-financed training reviewed was found to have design flaws that affected results.

Targeting of training content was found to be the most important design factor driving training success.

The organizational context for implementation of knowledge and skills learned was a second important determinant of successful capacity building through training.

Even where resources or incentives were initially lacking, training succeeded as long as there was strong client commitment to training goals and adequate support was given to addressing related workplace capacity gaps.

In all cases, training succeeded when its design was good and the organizational and institutional capacity context was adequately addressed in conjunction with training.

The WBI's training procedures and practices do not sufficiently anchor training within comprehensive capacity-building strategies, and are thus not generally conducive to the sustainable building of capacity.

The quality of project-financed training is uneven due to the lack of explicit design standards for all World Bank training activities, and lack of expert support for training activities embedded in projects.

The Bank does not adequately monitor or evaluate training results.

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Recommendations

The Bank can enhance the vital contribution of training to client capacity building by ensuring that the training it supports

• Is linked to the Bank's support for development objectives in client countries,
  
• Is embedded within broader capacity-building strategies that provide complementary support for the implementation of learning; and
  
• Conforms with best practice in training design.

The following three recommendations are intended to lead to this outcome:

(1) The Bank needs to develop guidance and quality criteria for the design and implementation of training, to enable the quality assurance, monitoring, and evaluation of all its training support. This guidance should be applied to all training financed by the Bank, including that directly provided by units such as the WBI. Design guidance should include:

• Diagnosis and training-needs assessment requirements for training initiation;
  
• Participant selection criteria;
  
• Standards for use of practical exercises and other active learning techniques in training;
  
• Use of follow-up support; and
  
• Provisions for monitoring and evaluation, including specification of performance-change objectives and key monitorable indicators.

(2) The Bank could improve the quality and impact of training by making available to its regional staff and borrowers resource persons with technical expertise in the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of training.

(3) Management must clarify the WBI's mandate on provision of training with capacity-building goals. If the WBI is to play a capacity-building role in client countries, its training processes should be substantially reengineered to ensure that training will be likely to contribute to sustainable change. New WBI training processes should ensure that all of its training meets the following criteria:

• Be based on a comprehensive capacity assessment of the target organization(s)/institution(s), done in cooperation with clients. This assessment should identify (a) clear and specific capacity-building objectives, (b) the human, institutional, and organizational capacity support that is necessary to achieving these objectives, and (c) measurable indicators of success.
  
• Work with operations and partners to identify and confirm, in advance, the resources for all capacity-building support needed to achieve objectives, including, where needed, (a) multiyear training programs, (b) follow-up technical assistance, and (c) organizational and institutional support measures, such as policy support and financing of implementation of learning.
  
• Be subject to external quality review and evaluation of results.

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