"Misinformation is a hidden, crippling virus that has made its way into every company and industry, misleading management, employees and customers at every turn," says Tim Adams, Chief Learning Officer for Knowledge Factor. "Organizations are bleeding away millions of dollars to misinformation each year -- in the form of legal costs, fines, on-the-job injuries, and in less tangible ways like poor customer satisfaction and product quality. Ignoring it can put a company at significant risk."

How much confidently held misinformation can an organization afford? That is the question business leaders should be asking themselves. Here is an excerpt from The Cost of Misinformation:

"There are too many examples today of companies that have been damaged from class action suits, huge legal settlements, malpractice charges and even product recalls that have resulted from employees making gross errors in judgment in the execution of their jobs. Presumably, most of these employees have been trained -- possibly even certified -- for their positions. Yet lack of correct knowledge -- or rather lack of awareness of incorrect knowledge -- puts their organizations in legal and financial jeopardy that, in many cases, has resulted in millions of dollars to remedy. It can damage a company’s reputation in the marketplace, and cause a loss of confidence in key financial markets."

Healthcare is an industry that relies on mastery -- confident, correct knowledge in action -- and the ability to validate that correct knowledge is learned and retained. Developing Confidence in Healthcare: A New Methodology to Assess and Ensure Qualifications addresses the critical nature of confidently-held misinformation in healthcare where faulty information can have deadly consequences:

"Are you aware that, despite the fact that nurses and physicians must complete rigorous certification programs prior to practicing, one of the largest causes of deaths in America’s healthcare system is human error? This fact points to a critical shortcoming in traditional training programs – the inability to validate that knowledge has been learned correctly and confidently after training. A growing body of research supports the fact that measuring knowledge is critical, but not sufficient in and of itself, to predicting employee behavior. A person’s confidence in that knowledge must also be measured to accurately assess competence."

The common theme in these white papers is that the metrics people generally use to measure the effectiveness of training are often faulty. The Naked Truth About Learning Analytics lays down an uncompromising argument as to why existing metrics and analytics are ill-fated and warrant closer review, and offer a unique solution to this problem:

"A growing body of research reveals intrinsic liabilities in the tools typically used to measure learning. Almost all measurement tools are susceptible to the contaminating effects of guessing -- learners who guess a correct answer are given credit for knowing the subject matter, even though they have no knowledge of the subject area. It is also possible for learners to have enough knowledge to select a correct answer from a list of options without having enough confidence in the subject material to actually act on that knowledge in practice. And few, if any, measurement tools have the ability to identify confidently-held misinformation -- incorrect knowledge someone believes with a high degree of confidence -- which is the most risky of all knowledge states."

These white papers and additional research documents are available free of charge in their entirety at http://www.knowledgefactor.com/research.php.

Knowledge Factor
Founded in 2000, Knowledge Factor has gained national acclaim for its unique ability to move people to total mastery in almost any discipline, resulting in better performing organizations. Today, the Company’s patented Confidence-Based Learning Systemtm is used to improve the performance of organizations inside some of the nation’s largest healthcare, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, food processing and financial services companies by identifying and eliminating competency gaps wherever they exist. For more information, go to www.knowledgefactor.com.

This press release was distributed through eMediawire by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company listed above.