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Chuck Holden is a learning and development practitioner who seeks to utilize clear and simple training methods in order to address complex business challenges and opportunities. Chuck holds a master’s of science in foundations of education and has more than 25 years of training experience. He is a career veteran of the United States Navy and since his military retirement has worked in myriad industries, including academia, banking, and compliance organizations. He is a designated Military Master Training Specialist and holds certifications in Project Leadership, The Kirkpatrick Evaluation method and Accelerated Learning.

Chuck Holden

Soft skills training can help reinforce and cement risk training principles for long-lasting effectiveness.

Risk Training Across Industries

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 

If you have decided you want to pursue an ATD credential but are unsure whether the Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD) or the Associate Professional in Talent Development (APTD) is right for you, I may be able to help. As a credential holder, previous manager of the ATD career development community, and editor/author of Find Your Fit: A Practical Guide for Landing a Job You’ll Love, I have had dozens of similar conversations with potential certification candidates and can speak about this choice on personal and professional levels.Think about your answers to these questions:What are your career goals? The first thing to determine is what you would like to do next in your career. Are you hoping to take on different responsibilities at work? Do you aspire to hold a managerial position? If you’re unsure about what you want to do next, you need to think it through before deciding which credential to pursue.Are you eligible? Both certifications have eligibility requirements because they are designed for professionals who already have experience and knowledge in the field. They’re not designed for people who are just starting out or who want to get into the profession.To be able to sit for the APTD or CPTD exams, you need work experience, and you must have completed professional development in key areas covered on the exam.Work ExperienceHow much experience do you have? To qualify for the APTD or CPTD exams, you need to have professional experience in learning and development or related functions such as human resources. CPTD candidates must have at least five years, and APTD candidates must have at least three years of work experience to qualify. The amount of time you spend on talent development activities is not specified, but you should have some experience across various functions.What type of experience qualifies? You need to have worked with adults on activities related to the capabilities described in the Professional and Organizational domains of ATD’s Talent Development Capability Model. We’ve listed the type of activities that your work experience should include in Figure 1. Check out the details under each topic by exploring the interactive capability model site.FIGURE 1Professional DevelopmentHave you done any professional development for yourself lately? For the APTD, you need to have completed 28 hours of professional development in the past three years. For the CPTD exam, you need at least 60 hours of professional development in the past five years.What type of professional development qualifies? Professional development activities must be verifiable, at least 30 minutes long, and relate to the topics in Figure 1. For more information about the type of professional development that qualifies, watch the short video on this webpage or review this infographic.Do you have broad-based or focused experience? Has your experience been focused on one or two main areas of expertise, such as training delivery or instructional design, or have you worked in many different areas across the talent development spectrum? Many people describe the APTD exam as best suited for individual contributors and the CPTD exam as most appropriate for those with more strategic or leadership experience.The APTD exam focuses on the knowledge you need to have gained after working for at least three years in the field. You must understand the concepts well enough to be applied at work, which is why your work experience is so important. The CPTD exam targets knowledge and skills needed at the five-year mark and beyond. It heavily emphasizes application and professional decision making and has a deeper focus on organizational capabilities.An example of the differences between the type of content covered on the two exams can be seen in Figure 2. The APTD and CPTD exams include questions about career and leadership development. However, the APTD exam focuses on your knowledge of the types of leadership development techniques, while the CPTD exam emphasizes full implementation of a leadership development program.Figure 2If you are eligible to take either one of the exams, the best way to decide is to review this comparative content outline for both exams or complete the gap analysis that can be found in the APTD and CPTD handbooks.What type of test taker are you? Another consideration is your comfort level with taking a timed test. The APTD and CPTD exams are computerized and taken in a secure test center or closely monitored online environment. When I was considering which credential to pursue, part of my decision was driven by the fact that I had not taken this sort of exam in quite a while.The APTD exam is a two-hour, multiple-choice exam with 115 questions. There is only one correct response, and you have an opportunity to review your answers before submitting your exam.The CPTD exam is a three-hour exam with two portions: one multiple-choice section and another with multipart case management-style questions.The multiple-choice questions are both knowledge and practice-based. As with the APTD exam, you may review and change your answers at the end of that section of the exam.The case management questions are a bit different. They pose a scenario then ask you to determine what actions should be taken at each step in the process. You will need to rely on your experience and professional judgment to answer the case management questions correctly. For this portion of the exam, you cannot go back and change your answers.How much time do you have to devote to preparing for the exam? Another key factor in your decision is the amount of time you can devote to preparing for the exam. It takes time to study and take the exam. Before you make a final decision, make sure you have room in your schedule to complete this goal. APTD candidates report studying between 60 and 80 hours, and CPTD candidates say they study between 80 and 120 hours for the exam.How will you pay for the exam fees? The final consideration will be the money you have available to invest in your professional development. If your employer supports your certification, take advantage of any funds that can be applied to preparation and exam fees. For more information about how to convince your employer, review this recent webinar.The APTD exam fee is $499 for ATD members and $699 for nonmembers.The CPTD exam fee s $975 for ATD members and $1,350 for nonmembers.Which one is right for me? Only you can determine which certification is the best fit for you, but here are a few last thoughts on the subject.Associate Professional in Talent Development (APTD): Even if you technically qualify to take the CPTD exam, you may want to consider the APTD exam. If your experience is focused in a few areas of knowledge or if you have little exposure to the organizational capabilities that are tested more heavily on the CPTD exam, the APTD may be the right choice. Many professionals who take the APTD exam have far more than three years of experience.Another advantage to taking the APTD exam first is that you can use it to fulfill the professional development requirement for the CPTD exam, should you decide to pursue it in the future. APTD certification can also be used to satisfy one year of the work experience required for the CPTD exam.Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD): If you have years of experience in a wide range of the topics covered on the exam**,** the CPTD may be your best choice. If you are in a management role, aspire to a management position, or hope to build a consulting practice in the future, the CPTD may be most appropriate for you.For more information, you may want to listen to one of these recent webinars or download a candidate handbook from the active candidates page. To network with others who are pursuing certification, join one of these LinkedIn groups:APTD Candidate Preparation LinkedIn GroupCPTD Candidate Preparation LinkedIn GroupPursuing an ATD certification is a challenging but rewarding experience. Join the next group of elite candidates to achieve an ATD certification.Still not sure which certification is right for you? Browse additional frequently asked questions or sign up for an upcoming call with ATD CI staff or current credential holders here.

The APTD or the CPTD? That Is the Question

Today there is more complexity and uncertainty in the workplace than ever before. Leadership styles based on commanding—power and fear—are not effective. Instead, managers must adopt a leadership approach that builds trust between the leader and those being led.Leadership is not a personal quality, but a result of one’s influence on others. Healthy leadership requires that one’s emotions and rational mind cooperate, working together like an authentic team.Developing effective leadership requires individualized work. Rather than learning how to fit a certain style of leadership, a manager must build his own way. My recently published ATD Press book, Leaders Don’t Command, provides conceptual and practical tools for trust-filled team leadership in today’s workplace.Below is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Leaders Don’t Command:However important you think what you are proposing may be for the team, you will never generate a leadership relationship without first establishing a base of trust. If you have that trust, what you say will not be valued in the same way as if you didn’t. The question, then, is how do you create that trust?Obviously, there is a trust that comes from shared experience, if they have seen you act in similar situations and the group has gotten a good feeling from them that would be considered worthy of trust. You would have achieved an a posteriori trust. Notice that however unfair it may seem trust will be based more on the emotional residue that the acts left behind, than on the objective acts themselves.In management, we often see ourselves in situations that require the trust of the group without having been able to gain it through shared experience. This is very common, for example, when:The group doesn’t really know you because you’re new to the team and, despite this, your bosses are already expecting miracles.The group perceives the situation as something completely new to you and feels that prior experience is meaningless.Your role has changed recently and you haven’t yet been accepted by the organization. For example, after a recent promotion, your old colleagues still view you as a peer.In these situations we need another type of trust, referred to as a priori, and that, unlike the previous type, should come from expectations we should be able to create.OK, so how do I go about gaining a priori trust?A priori trust comes from your ability to create and communicate believable expectations that minimize uncertainty. For people to do things, we first have to want to do them (attitude) and even before that, we have to believe that they’re possible—or better still, desirable. Otherwise, we will not move or allow ourselves to be moved easily!“Yes, we can!” The motto that drove Barack Obama to the White House was hope! Hope is incredibly powerful and can be used to motivate and demotivate. It’s a secret weapon of leadership and an essential result of positive expectations.Imagine you have hope readily available. How will you get them to buy into it? Let’s look at an example.Here is a very common, real-life situation for any middle manager: You receive instructions to take charge of a team that faces some complicated task with very few resources and you decide on a course of action that you have trouble understanding clearly. Being the good professional, you take on the challenge responsibly and in good spirits. You are ready to make use of the communication techniques the company has given you in the workshops they’ve been organizing. You prepare yourself and carefully construct your message, but you can’t get completely comfortable with it, even though you know it’s what you have to say. You arm yourself with courage and go at it with energy and vigor.To your surprise, the team is immediately defensive. They aggressively focus on the difficulties and only half listen to the goodies that you have so ably offered them. “That’s strange. They don’t usually do this,” you tell your-self. It’s as if they could smell the doubt you were holding back.You start to feel insincere and realize you’re achieving the opposite of what you wanted. This is not going well. Quick! Do something! With your trademark vigor, you spring back and end up righting the ship by, as you would put it, “cutting the crap.” You quickly rifle off a series of instructions that immediately gets everyone into gear. You are not achieving leadership. You are acting like a boss: You have gotten them working, but not wanting to work.Later, when you’ve calmed down, you reflect—some managers still do this—and you realize that your team read every internal doubt you were trying to keep from them. You realize that if you do not believe in what you do, your team will pick up on it to the point where you may get the opposite of what you were looking for. Emotions travel at incredible speeds between individuals through nonverbal communication, which, according to some experts, accounts for 80 percent of all communication.So it seems that in order to lead, you either do what you believe in or you learn to believe in what you’re doing. In other words, to lead a project, you either believe in it outright or you find new ways of seeing it that allow you to believe in it. Finding these perspectives is fundamental to creating the key element of leadership that we call vision.For more on trust-building, hope, and emotional intelligence in leadership, check out Jorge’s book, Leaders Don’t Command.

How Do I Gain Trust as a Leader?

The simple creation of content and access to platforms will not ensure success with social media for learning. You will need to spend some time getting ready, linking the tools to other learning moments, and measuring your online success. Getting Ready to Use Social Media When choosing a social media tool, those that are accessible and familiar to participants should take preference. If this is not the case, you must spend more time preparing for the learning process by selecting the ideal platform. Before you ask people to use the tools, you need to be sure they are working well. For smaller initiatives, you may be inclined to just see what happens, but failure will still lead to all-around demotivation. If tools and processes are new for learners, some education on their use may be required. Be sure to mention early any tools that will be used, describing expectations and the perceived benefits of the approach. In initial communications, include links that allow direct access without learners having to search for the tool themselves. Also give clear instructions on how to use new tools. Instructional videos may be available online for this purpose. Making the Link to Social Media You’ll need to make the extra effort to connect social media–based activities to more traditional learning processes. Although some of the following six efforts will become less important in the long term, they are still considered good practice. Be social media–friendly in class. When you introduce or close topics, provide tweetable summaries that learners may want to share, or ask them to create some: “How would you summarize this learning in 140 characters?” If you are using flipcharts, make them worthy of a photo. This will motivate learners to review and share them later. When sharing content, limit its size to small chunks, which will aid in learners’ comprehension. For example, a video shouldn’t be longer than two or three minutes. If you use inklewriter to share an interactive story, don’t make it a novel; use a few short paragraphs to illustrate your point. For larger-scope learning initiatives, consider sharing the same learning content across different media to account for different learner tastes. Cross-semination is the idea of linking content together via different platforms, which will encourage learners to find and share different content. If you use a discussion group for a homework question, add a link in that discussion to other online content that will clarify the main learning points. If you post an instructional video for e-learning, use the description box to link to other content, such as a description of the module. Padlet and Pearltrees are great tools for linking everything together. It’s important to make the link between traditional offline learning moments and social media–based online moments. When in class, be clear about online expectations after class. If learners take the time to like or comment online, mention this when they are all together. Thank people for their efforts and quote things shared or discussed online. If you really want to walk the talk with social media, use the golden triangle of networking: Ask, thank, and give. If you are using a discussion forum to support learning, ask specific context-driven open questions, or ask learners to search for and share a reference. When they do either of these things, be sure to thank them with a like or a comment, as well as verbally during in-class learning moments. This is an opportunity not only to show you care, but also to take the conversation further. Be sure to share more yourself, whether it is a reference or simply giving your opinion on what is being said. These activities will encourage learners to also ask, thank, and give.Finally, games are a good way to encourage learners to use the tools. In addition to using points, badges, and leaderboards for sharing, incorporate elements of challenge and self-expression. Set up a social media– based content treasure hunt, use the team-based “Space Race” in Socrative, or have participants create a simple, fun online profile for longer-term learning initiatives (with an avatar) using Padlet. Measuring Success The last key to success is the continuous follow-up and measurement of online learner activity. This does not replace standard tools for evaluation of learning success, but you will get some metrics on tool adoption.The most obvious online measure is traffic. If you have a password-protected blog post that only a limited number of people can access, check to see how many times it was viewed. With a private YouTube video, you can be reasonably sure that 10 views equals 10 learners; with a public video, hits may have come from elsewhere. If you use Padlet or community-based tools such as LinkedIn, Yammer, and Facebook, a comment or post will tell you that someone visited the site. But absence of such posts does not mean other learners didn’t look at the site. The second thing to measure is the content in comments or discussions. By taking the time to read through what is written and shared, you will see what participants think of the content, as well as what knowledge they acquired online and offline. However, if participants are talking about topics unrelated to the content, don’t worry too much—they are still sharing and that is a good thing.Finally, look for continuity between comments and sharing. Are people extending one learner’s comments with more discussion? This may show real interest in that particular topic. Do people reference other people’s content or comments in their own sharing? This could indicate more traffic than you initially estimated, as well as real interest in the topic. Editor’s Note: This post is excerpted from the TD at Work, “Improving Formal Learning with Social Media” (ATD Press, 2015), which is featured in the new collection Learning Technologies Digital Collection.

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