Are you navigating the complex landscape of evaluating the true effectiveness of learning initiatives and operations while pondering the level of concern shared by your peers and stakeholders? You’re not alone.
During my 15 years in the field of learning and development solutions, I have observed a concerning trend: Despite the crucial role of ROI in showcasing the impact of learning initiatives, it often remains underutilized or entirely overlooked.
ROI in learning is more than just about metrics like cost saving, revenue generation, evaluation feedback or increased productivity. It’s about integrating learning with an organization’s broader strategy to enhance its brand and support its goals, especially in organizations where a high volume of learning is designed and delivered. Unfortunately, in an era of budget cuts and organizational resizing, the significance of measuring ROI is frequently underestimated, leading to a lack of accountability in decision-making.
This article’s focus is not how to measure ROI, rather, it is to explore how you can integrate it within the fabric of your organization. The setback is really about organizations not having a culture that values learning ROI in the first place. Collecting data is one thing, but drawing conclusions, reviewing it with the right stakeholders, and acting on the data is another.
In this article, I will delve into best practices for fostering a robust ROI learning culture within organizations. While these strategies are not bulletproof, they serve as a valuable starting point for learning leaders to initiate crucial conversations within their organizations if they are not already happening.
Strategic alignment
To truly value learning and ROI, organization leaders must view it through a strategic lens, akin to how C-suite leaders drive business goals. Having you, a chief learning officer, at the executive table can be transformative, ensuring that learning strategies are not only aligned with, but central to organizational objectives. Here, learning is not an ancillary function but a core business strategy, demanding accountability and strategic oversight similar to other C-suite roles and departments. This is especially true if you have multiple leaders in your organization delivering learning products to external clients without any consistency internally on processes, technology, evaluation, etc.
Calls to action
- Vision alignment: Ensure learning strategies are in line with the organization’s long-term vision.
- Objective setting: Work closely with leadership to define measurable learning goals for the learning program or initiative.
- Leadership and representation: Advocate to spearhead ROI-centric learning initiatives and be accountable for learning at the executive table.
- Interdepartmental collaboration: Facilitate ongoing interactions between the learning department and other business units to align learning outcomes with business needs, and understand revenue impacts and customer insights.
- Policies: Work with leadership to create policies or guidelines that take learning ROI into account for performance incentives. For example, if a company distributes performance bonuses based on a scorecard system of a new learning program launch or revamp, it’s essential to include measurable metrics related to learning outcomes in those criteria, if applicable. This ensures employees are incentivized to contribute to learning initiatives that ultimately benefit the organization’s goals and objectives.
- Define roles and responsibilities: Work with leadership and HR to update job descriptions to clearly define who is responsible for collecting data or analyzing data when they work on learning initiatives. The last thing you want is everyone saying it isn’t their job when it’s time to unpack learning ROI, or who is accountable for all learning at the organization to ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction.
- Outsourcing strategy: It is imperative to tailor outsourcing strategies to the unique needs and circumstances of each organization. For example, smaller organizations with limited resources may find it more cost-effective to outsource certain learning projects, while larger organizations might have the capacity to manage initiatives internally. Regardless, it is essential to gauge leadership’s stance on outsourcing learning initiatives to external vendors. Understanding their perspective provides valuable insight into strategic decision-making regarding the allocation of resources and the pursuit of organizational goals as it significantly impacts effectiveness, efficiency and cost.
- Stakeholder analysis: Conduct surveys and direct engagements to understand the needs and expectations of both internal and external stakeholders, consider mapping your stakeholders to understand who you may need to influence if learning ROI is new to your organization.
- Inclusive planning: Involve key stakeholders such as sales teams and external clients early in the planning stages of learning initiatives and in the review of learning data.
- Working group establishment: Form a Working Group that includes internal and external stakeholders to align strategies to the organizational vision.
- Proactive inclusion: Ensure your presence in strategic meetings to educate and inform the executive team and external stakeholders about the value and impact of learning initiatives. Talk about learning ROI whenever you have the chance.
- Continuous communication: Develop and maintain communication channels that provide regular updates on learning progress and business impacts, soliciting feedback to adapt programs and initiatives to evolving needs.
Continuous improvement
There is beauty in continuous improvement—it is about being better than you were yesterday. Inspired by the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, learning initiatives and teams should always strive to be better than they were yesterday. This means not just collecting data, but actively using it to refine and enhance learning processes. Regular cycles of evaluation, feedback and refinement ensure that learning initiatives remain relevant and impactful.
Calls to action
- Educate yourself and company: Ensure your executive team and key stakeholders understand the critical importance of learning ROI. Training, as we know, can lead to better problem-solving and long-term value.
- Progress over perfection: The key is to start. Implement one change at a time. For example, if you don’t have learner feedback, start there.
- Utilize feedback: Actively seek feedback from participants and stakeholders to refine learning initiatives whether through surveys or informal coffee chats. Use this feedback to enhance the learning experience and optimize outcomes.
- Celebrate good efforts: Acknowledge individuals or teams who are contributing to gathering data and improving ROI learning culture. This recognition could be in the form of a success story in a company newsletter, praise given on a company recognition platform or related to a performance bonus.
- Evaluate and improve: Don’t wait to implement feedback, be agile but maintain some structure in terms of when you evaluate your data, whether that is quarterly or annually.
Robust measurement practices
Ultimately, the success of learning initiatives depends heavily on robust measurement practices. Without concrete data, it is impossible to accurately gauge success or pinpoint areas needing improvement. This is not just about proving the value of learning, but also about using data to enhance its effectiveness. Measuring learning ROI serves a dual purpose: It validates the worth of learning initiatives and drives improvements to make them even better. Moreover, it is crucial to recognize that not all initiatives remain relevant or effective over time. Even a previously successful learning program can become outdated, and data can help determine whether these initiatives should continue or be discontinued. The same can be true about using ROI to show evidence when making operational decisions on learning teams for HR capital or restructuring.
Calls to action
- Framework establishment: Develop or refine an ROI measurement framework that fits your organizational needs and culture. Ensure it is flexible enough to accommodate changes in the business environment. Read about metrics and agree with your leadership team on what data should get measured and how it will be used to make informed decisions.
- Comprehensive data gathering: Ensure a comprehensive approach to data collection, integrating both quantitative and qualitative data to measure learning impact and decision-making.
- Advanced analytics: Utilize analytics to derive actionable insights from learning data on LMSs and other operational tools for project management. Explore predictive analytics to forecast the future impact.
- Regular reporting: Establish regular reporting mechanisms to communicate learning outcomes to stakeholders, using data to drive decisions whether from sales figures or the hours spent developing a program.
- Integration with business data: Link learning data with core business metrics to demonstrate how learning impacts the broader business strategy. This requires collaboration across teams.
Going forward
It’s time for learning leaders to step up, demonstrate value through actionable ROI and redefine the role of learning in business success. Let’s not wait for change—let’s be the change.
You might be questioning where you will find the time to action this—after all, learning teams often operate under tight deadlines and are frequently under-resourced. But finding time to do this will prove to be fruitful, because you can make an impact on someone being laid off, work being outsourced when it shouldn’t, learning feedback not being seen by the right people and so many other critical decisions.
The successful implementation of these strategies might depend on the specific scale of your organization, so plans should be custom-tailored with this in mind. Ultimately, the aim is to equip leaders with the tools necessary to spark discussions, explore areas further, challenge existing norms and start building an ROI-driven culture. It will take time and determination, but initiating this transformation is essential.
