Karen L. West

Effective training for a revolving door

When you’re looking to maintain, protect, or grow the budget that powers your corporate LMS (not to mention the rest of your L&D ecosystem!), you need to be able to make your case to business-minded stakeholders. These C-suite executives want hard data that points to tangible business impact—and, when you know where to look, that’s exactly what you can give them.You’ve got a wealth of areas across your organization that benefit from L&D, and they all have a data-backed story to tell. When you know what kind of results you can expect your L&D investments to deliver, you can start planning ways to measure those results and couch them in terms your C-suite will appreciate. That means looking beyond the course usage and completion metrics that, while an essential part of your learning analytics, need to be combined with business impact data to make the most compelling case to the people holding the purse strings.Read on to discover the quantifiable outcomes your C-suite wants to see, including:Increased levels of engagementA strong reputation for learningPowerful internal mobility practicesEmployee Retention and AcquisitionYou’ll likely be aware, in broad terms, that good L&D can have a positive impact on employee retention and acquisition. These are fantastic factors to consider when you’re looking to demonstrate quantifiable returns on your L&D investments, provided you can guide stakeholders through the chain of linkages that connect learning to cost savings. So, what’s the evidence that L&D reduces turnover and increases an employer’s appeal for prospective applicants? And how can you leverage that information to impress your internal stakeholders? Read on.Articulating the Value of a Strong Reputation for LearningAccording to 2023 research, organizations that don’t offer development opportunities risk losing talent—in fact, that lack of development was respondents’ most commonly cited reason for quitting. The conclusion here is simple enough: when you’ve got a robust, tech-backed culture of learning, your organization is going to be more appealing to all those prospective hires looking for development-rich career opportunities. We’ve established that L&D can, in theory, have an impact on your reputation and on the talent acquisition that follows. But how might you turn this observation into a solid case for the business impact of your L&D investments?If you just wanted to show that your L&D efforts have left you with a good reputation for employee development, that’s fairly straightforward to achieve. You might, for example, incorporate a survey question into your application process, asking applicants why they’re interested in your organization. If applicants are citing your learning culture, you’ll know your reputation is growing in the right direction. But on its own, that information just isn’t enough. It might get across some positive sentiment directed toward your L&D function, but it doesn’t tell upper management how your learning-first reputation leads to business impact.Instead, you’ll want to identify some of the measurable benefits associated with your talent acquisition. If you’ve got a reputation for those sought-after employee development offerings, you can expect a wider pool of candidates—which means you’ll have more high-caliber hires to choose from. Demonstrate that high caliber to your CFO by taking note of factors like reduced time to competency or increased productivity in departments that receive new hires. You’re then just a step away from a set of highly tangible data that business leaders will find much more persuasive.Communicating the Links Between Engagement and Your Bottom LineGiven the popularity of employee development among workers, it’s no wonder that L&D is often linked to higher levels of employee engagement. According to research sponsored by Bridge, learning opportunities were the most commonly cited factor among respondents looking to nurture engagement. Gaining employee engagement data is straightforward enough with the right tools. In fact, Bridge itself offers employee engagement software that allows you to send out regular pulse surveys to check in on engagement levels. So, if you’re looking to establish how your L&D program leads to better business outcomes, you’d be wise to prove that your learning investments are affecting engagement. You might achieve this by conducting before-and-after snapshot surveys to see if your engagement levels improve following a new learning initiative.However, once again, engagement statistics alone aren’t necessarily enough to sell your learning investments internally. To the people holding the purse strings, the question’s going to be “so what?”, and—with the right preparation—that’s a question you can answer with hard figures.According to Bridge’s report, the area most commonly affected by employee engagement is retention. So, once you’ve established that your learning investments are engaging your people, you can start to examine your turnover figures. If your more engaged employees are sticking around for longer periods of time, you’ll be able to point to the substantial, dollars-and-cents cost savings that’ll likely justify any initial L&D expenditure.Connecting Mobility Metrics to Clear Cost ReductionsPromotions and other kinds of internal movement are made possible in part by learning—and, handily, this is something that your HR function will have plenty of data on. If your people are using your learning ecosystem to qualify for internal vacancies, you’ll be able to link the course usage data in your LMS to the talent mobility data held by your HR team. The result? A compelling business case for your learning function: one in which L&D is the lynchpin of talent mobility.That said, higher rates of internal movement aren’t necessarily going to impress your CFO without a little extra context. If you want buy-in for mobility-enabling software, you’ll have to contend with a key question: what’s the business impact of better internal mobility?Once again, turnover numbers are your friend here. Research shows that turnover is less likely when employees are able to move internally. And that’s especially true of workers born after 1996, who—according to LinkedIn—are much more likely than older generations to agree with the statement that “through learning, I can explore potential career paths at my company”.So, your challenge isn’t just to show that your learning ecosystem has led to a rise in internal mobility. It’s to show that these upward or lateral movers are sticking around for longer rather than seeking opportunities elsewhere, reducing the various costs associated with hiring new talent.Reskilling and UpskillingAccording to a survey from GP Strategies and Watershed, less than half of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their organization uses data to understand skills gaps. That’s a lot of room for improvement, especially when 69 percent of organizations reported having a skills gap in 2023—compared to 55 percent in 2021. This is an alarmingly large number that’s growing at an equally alarming rate, and there’s no question that when employees don’t have the skills they need to do their jobs effectively, you’re going to see lower productivity and decreased employee performance.Clearly, the ability to close those gaps through learning and skills development practices has huge implications for any business’ bottom line: It’s no wonder that Watershed names new skills qualifications as one of the more valuable L&D targets to measure. Regulatory ComplianceIn general terms, your discussions about L&D investments will center around how your learning resources make an impact. But there’s one exception. In the world of compliance, there’s a strong case to be made for the avoidance of impact—especially when it comes to the serious penalties that noncompliance can bring.If your learning technology can keep your people compliant—whether that’s by consistently training employees on the same standards, keeping everyone up to date, or providing that all-important compliance documentation—you’ll protect your organization from outcomes as serious as major fines or even being shut down. This is especially true of organizations in high-consequence industries, which often face additional compliance challenges around multilingual needs and data security.A little digging into the penalties your organization is exposed to can go some way toward justifying any L&D expenditure that puts compliance first. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, 2023 saw fines for financial noncompliance alone totaling around $5 billion. Against even a small slice of a figure like that, you’ll have no problem making the case that the cost of a compliance-first LMS (for example) is more than justified.And good compliance training doesn’t just help you avoid fines. It can also offer savings like lower insurance costs—a tangible figure that will go some way toward mitigating your initial learning tech expenditure.

How to Prove the ROI of Learning & Development: Unlocking the Metrics That Matter 

 Whether you are a Mom-and-Pop operation or one of the larger talent development firms, you probably have some sort of strategy guiding you. Hopefully, this strategy has been documented and is the outgrowth of input from key people in the organization. But even if the strategy is only in your head, it is still waiting for action.Unfortunately, many strategic plans, which are key to the future of our businesses, are rarely executed fully—if at all. In the previous blog on strategic growth planning, I mentioned that some 80 percent of strategic plans fail to get executed. (I know I have read or heard this stat enough times to think it is true. But if truth be known, I don’t have a source to share with you to validate this alleged finding. Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that most strategic plans are not fully executed as designed.)There are myriad reasons why this is the case, not the least of which are the normal changes to a business model or that leadership demands a different direction than originally proposed, deeming the original strategy moot. More importantly, in the ever-evolving talent development industry, one could even argue that sticking to a growth strategy could be counter-productive.  But what about strategic plans that are not subject to major interferences in the business model or competitive landscape? Why aren’t they  implemented? Execution Best PracticesA March 2015 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It,”  by Sull, Homkes, and Sull spells out several likely culprits, highlighting the myths many business leaders adhere to about strategy execution. Their research found that several practices actually get in the way of effective execution, including:inadequate alignment across business unitsundying commitment·one-way communicationstoo much of a performance cultureexecutive-only leadership.While the authors studied very large multinational organizations across many industries, these strategy execution lessons that apply to any organization.  Let’s take a closer look at each practice. Alignment:  To execute a strategic plan in a typical three- to five-year time span, senior leadership must be in total agreement about the direction the business is driving toward. Without this sort of alignment, major departments  and functions will continue to do their own “thing”—working at cross-purposes of the overall business.Interestingly, the research pointed out that while 40 percent of managers note alignment (or lack thereof) as the main cause of poor execution, the second major reason was failure to coordinate across units, noted by 30 percent of participants. Apparently, alignment alone doesn’t necessarily equate to execution—albeit it is a significant influencer.  So, while one of the primary goals of any strategic planning process is to achieve senior leader alignment, it also is important to align across all business units.Commitment: Most business leaders believe that alignment requires commitment to the strategic direction. But in my experience, alignment can exist (on the surface) without total commitment to the strategy. In this case, leaders agree with the overarching direction and some elements of the strategy, but not with all of it. In fact, unswervingly sticking to a strategic plan may impede its execution, given that many intervening factors and changes will surface over time. While commitment to the plan is initially necessary, ignoring the environmental changes taking place will undoubtedly result in leaders executing the wrong plan.Communications: The most likely reasons organizations fail to execute strategic plans:Leaders don’t provide communication to the rest of the business.Leaders provide communications that are unclear, foggy, and lack any inspiration for moving forward.Simply communicating the strategy from “on high” is too little to achieve a well-executed strategy. Instead, communications must create a dialogue that enables employees to offer input and questions so they can truly understand their role in the execution process. If a rational business case for the strategic direction isn’t offered to—and accepted at—the individual level, it will be difficult for employees to internalize the plan and their role in its execution.Performance Culture: Possessing a culture that is committed to performance is critical to execution. Organizations must establish a culture that recognizes and rewards practices like teamwork, experimentation, and flexibility, which may appear at times to slow down performance.  Although a high-performance culture values and demonstrates continual accountability, this head-down and all-hands-on-deck approach doesn’t allow organizations to slow down in the short term so they can move faster in the long term.  Indeed, the right delays—yielding the right results—should be perfectly acceptable.Executive Leadership: We often hear that true change must start at the top. But top-down involvement can impede the achievement of sustainable results. Certainly, the CEO and C-level team must lead the initial charge for execution, and even monitor its progress. However, the sooner frontline employees can internalize a strategy, the sooner they can rightfully execute it. Once the organization feels it must wait for executive approval, the process slows, engagement wanes, and innovation falters. In other words, it takes a village to effectively execute, not just a team of senior leaders who decide when and how execution should take place.Bottom LineThese execution practices are logical enough and, at some level, seem relatively simple to enact. Regrettably, they become more complicated in their actual operation. Perhaps, though, this is just the nature of most businesses that are growing—with growth comes frequent change and even alterations to the corporate strategic direction.Maintaining flexibility around strategy is a dual-edged sword, because sometimes flexibility can become an easy excuse for not following the original, well-thought out plan. Other times, flexibility makes complete sense and is, in fact,  necessary for the business to move forward. In either case, executing a strategic plan is a critical element of both the short- and long-term success of any business, including those in the talent development space. What’s more, minding these best practices can help any organization execute their strategy with success.How have you experienced poor to no execution of a strategic plan? Whether you were the leader or the follower, what were the reasons for this in your business? What were the real business consequences of the failed execution? How could the execution have been specifically improved? Share your experiences in the Comments below.  To learn more, check out my book The Complete Guide to Building and Growing a Talent Development Firm.