Thursday, July 22, 2021

HPI Model Step 3 - Intervention

When we think about performance intervention, we likely automatically think about training but guess what? Most of the time training does not work.

See this Harvard Business Review article that discusses why professional education does not work. Do you know that psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus showed in the late 19th Century that if new information isn’t applied, we’ll forget about 75% of it after just six days?

The key is really matching the intervention that will best correct a gap. 


The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) spells out these categories of intervention other than training:

  • Job and Performance Aids
  • Motivation and Incentive Intervention
  • Environmental Engineering Interventions
  • Personnel Selection and Assignment Interventions

They stress that the intervention selection and design process must consider: 

  • Performance Support
  • Job Analysis/Work Design
  • Personnel Development
  • Human Resources Development
  • Organizational Communication
  • Organizational Design and Development
  • Financial Systems

What non-training interventions do you think would work for you?

Reference: https://ispi.org/default.aspx




Step 6 - Evaluation and Measurement