Boardroom meetings at the moment are generally less cheerful than in more buoyant times – HR directors, marketing directors, sales and operations directors; all eye each other tensely as they fight tooth and nail to make sure their respective budgets are not compromised while the economy closes in from outside.

In different sectors of business, different departments are the ones facing spending cuts, but across the spectrum of British industry, training budgets are always subject to scrutiny.

HR chiefs, and the readers and members of Changeboard, will hardly need me to tell them why training is important; and there is little value I will be able to add by extolling all the benefits of investing in CPD – no doubt this online community will include experts far better placed to discuss these issues, and most readers will already be in agreement with the need to invest.

Where some HR departments still seem less willing to invest, however, is in assessment. In a business world where accountability is ever more in demand, surely trainers would be keener to demonstrate some more tangible return on investment?

Of course, attitudes vary across different industries. In the world of IT, certification is key.

Few credible IT professionals would dream of pursuing a career in that fast-changing industry without constantly learning and then sitting the appropriate tests to be certified. Their CVs will brim with globally recognisable certificates and qualifications from a mixture of academic awarding bodies and leading companies alike – from CompTIA and the British Computer Society to VMware, Citrix and Cisco – these qualifications are universally acknowledged to be the pathway to career options and personal progression.

Also, to look back to the first training experiences most of us have ever had, take the education system as another example. At school, it was never in question that what we learned would not be assessed in some way. It is simply accepted here: what would be the point of education if pupils didn’t come out of the end of it with something to show for it?

In many big business sectors, meanwhile, some corporations that contribute heavily to the economy still lag behind with regard to measuring the results of their training. But a shift is happening. More and more are starting to recognise that a “happy sheet”, or reactionnaire – a familiar evaluation tool at the end of so many training sessions – is no longer sufficient.

There are many reasons why this shift is happening, and why more and more are earmarking budget for formal assessment as well as training, in spite of the economic climate.

The first, and unavoidable, reason is regulation. Following in the footsteps of the US, more and more British business sectors are becoming subject to formalised licensure. Perhaps due to an increasingly litigious society, it has become the norm in America for every trade from estate agents to beauty salons to be bound by codes of practice and professional qualifications, to the extent that by law one cannot now pursue such a career without first passing the test.

In the UK, meanwhile, perhaps we have yet to reach those levels, but all trends point in that direction. We now accept that our financial services providers have to be certified in order to practice, and we would not trust a mortgage advisor for example if they did not comply with the minimum level of skills required by the FSA.

Yet these requirements only came into force relatively recently, and it seems only a matter of time before anyone from hairdressers to car salesmen become required to be qualified, all in the name of protecting the consumer.

This will create a fairer marketplace, with honest businesses no longer having to fear being undermined by less scrupulous competitors; and it will also foster an environment for more confident deal-making as businesses and customers can see more clearly that their suppliers and partners are credible.

One might argue too, that even if your particular industry is not (yet) bound by such codes of practice, it would still make good sense to minimise risk.

This is perhaps the strongest argument for assessment when a recession bites and business strategies become ever more ultra-low risk. Every single member of your staff is to some extent the guardian of your company’s reputation, and must therefore be able to demonstrate the skills required in order to protect that.

A human error in anything from manufacturing to customer service can not only threaten your reputation, but can also lead to legal action; training and assessment would clearly offer peace of mind by ensuring a far lesser likelihood of such an outcome.

The evidence that this is happening is all around us – the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is giving devolved power to companies from McDonalds to Flybe to act as awarding bodies in their own right.

This means that these employers can train, test and certify their staff to a standard that is officially recognised outside their own organisation – giving them the competitive advantage of setting the best-of-breed benchmark.

Here, then, we see compelling reasons why employers and industry regulators are moving towards integrating testing into their training programmes. But they are not the only ones driving the change.

Employees too, the participants in the training themselves, are also crying out for formal assessment because they want to see that there is a point to the training they are undertaking. They want clear career progression and to see that what they are learning in their job is meaningful, credible, and is helping them to develop rather than to stand still.

At this point, many employers might reasonably ask the question, “Why should I pay for my staff to notch up qualifications so they can just jump ship and look for a better job?”

Experience and research has in fact shown that employees feel empowered and valued when their companies make such an investment in them, and are more likely to be loyal and motivated.

So in short, HR departments’ justifications for assessment include building credibility and reputation, giving a competitive advantage, the internal incentive option, adding value to sell to clients - but what of their other important task: hiring?

Assessment is proving to be of great benefit here too. How much money is currently wasted on hiring staff that aren’t quite right for the job? A growth area in assessment is professional psychometric and aptitude testing at the selection stage.

To get the right person in for the right job, you need to understand their capabilities; and by continuous assessment once they are in the role you can improve retention and job satisfaction.

Selection assessment can ease the workloads of HR departments by giving them this necessary understanding of candidates’ professional competences, even in niche knowledge areas and specialist skills bases.

Furthermore, in a growing assessment culture, the selection process will also be eased by industry-recognised job-specific qualifications on CVs.

Finally, then, to the crux of the question. How much time and money is involved? Assessment is certainly not an expensive process – often around 5% of the cost of the training. It ought not to impose too much in terms of time either: a busy workforce certainly doesn’t need to be sitting exams for exams’ sake, rather all of the above reasons point to the need for tailored, job-specific courses and assessments.

And the implementation of such tests can all be shifted onto external specialists, thus alleviating time pressures on in-house L&D and HR departments.

Indeed, if a modern, secure, computer-based test is included with – and integrated into – the training programme, there ought to remain no barriers to prevent candidates from taking on or off-site tests anywhere in the world to prove their true worth.