Kirkpatrick first published his model of training evaluation in the $1950$s$.$ The model has been widely used and updated over the years but continues to represent a useful way of thinking about how employee learning should be evaluated. Imagine you are a human resources professional in the central office of Mega Insurance Agency. The company offers a wide range of personal and business insurance products, including home, auto and personal liability insurance for individuals, and various types of business insurance, including general liability, business property and auto, workers$$ compensation, errors and omissions, and cyber protection coverage. Coverage is sold and policies are serviced through agents in regional offices throughout the Midwest. You are part of a team planning a leadership development program for supervisors of administrative and support staff. The goal of the program is to strengthen the quality of the performance review process for front$-$line employees. The current performance review process is relatively unstructured, and supervisors typically rush through performance appraisals without thoroughly assessing employee strengths and opportunities. This has resulted in a weak performance management system, driven more by personalities and relationships rather than by measurable performance criteria and data. Your team hopes to engage supervisors more fully in identifying and assessing competencies required by administrative and support staff and linking assessment results to performance improvement plans. By including the supervisors$$ managers in the learning and development program, your team hopes to change the organization's culture and expectations to be more focused on performance outcomes required to achieve long$-$term organizational goals to capture a larger share of the insurance market. As the team begins its work on the leadership development program, you remind your colleagues of the importance of planning for program evaluation. The team leader asks you to present to the group an overview of an evaluation plan and the rationale for developing an evaluation approach as the learning and development program is planned and implemented. Answer the following Propose to your colleagues the relevance of evaluating the learning and development program. Justify your recommendation for a structured approach to evaluation with citations to the literature outlining the advantages of thorough evaluation. Use the Kirkpatrick model to critique the four levels of evaluation. Analyze how your team might collect data at each of the four levels. Project how collected data could be used to assess the value and effectiveness of the learning and development program in improving the performance management process for administrative and support staff. Anticipate criticisms of the proposed evaluation plan. Defend against anticipated criticisms. KIRKPATRICK'S FOUR LEVELS OF EVALUATION