After attending a skills development or training intervention, students should be able to:

	Retain the information learned in the training program.
	Apply the learned skills on the job.
	Use these skills to positively contribute to business results.

In a comprehensive training program implementation, the evaluation of student retention is accomplished during Stage 6 of the Skills Development and Assessment Octagon. 

This stage concerns itself with determining if the learned skills are actually being applied on the job.

It is important that students remember what they learned in a training intervention. 

But if students don't apply what they learned on the job, the training program is a failure. 

Successful training programs affect behavioral changes in the student audience, allowing the students to better perform their jobs and positively contribute to business results.

As a result, it is important to measure the extent to which students apply their learned skills on the job.

  In instances in which the application of learned skills on the job is less than expected, the root cause of this failure must be determined. 

The problem may lie with a flaw in the training program. 

Conversely, the training program may have successfully transferred the desired skills, but external forces are preventing the students from applying the skills on the job. 

The company culture may not yet embrace the changes fostered by the training program or the corporate processes may not have yet been updated. 

A careful and thorough analysis of the actual use of skills on the job and the causes for failures to use the skills can pinpoint the root cause of the problem.  

Evaluating the use of skills on the job is critical to an organization's success. 

A verification that skills are being used validates the success and value of the training program.

Determining the root causes of failures to apply skills on the job allows an organization to implement the appropriate prescriptive measures to fix the problem. 

Careful measurements allow an organization to avoid "fixing" problems that don't exist by determining the likely causes of the problems.

  This allows the organization to fix the real problems while leaving sound programs in place.