If you're an enterprise L&D leader and you're overwhelmed by the idea of measuring L&D's business impact, I've got 3 simple ways you can start doing it that'll make your work 10x more impactful and 100x more fulfilling: 1 - ALIGN L&D WITH YOUR HR AND ORG STRATEGY If it’s a priority for your org and it involves people development then it should be your priority too. Plus it’s easy to get buy-in at all levels if it’s an org-wide priority. But first you have to understand the current state, understand why it’s a problem and quantify it. An example could be: "To increase upselling to existing customers" In this case, it'd be important to understand what the percentage and profile are of customers who are upsold to. To understand the main objections faced by your teams when attempting to upsell and use those numbers as your ground zero. Now, these might not be the most important numbers because those will be determined by the stakeholders themselves. And it won’t be a 100% skills and capability issue but you can’t leave factors unexplored in pursuit of what's critical. Being too afraid to ask questions in case you don’t like the answer is no reason not to ask them. I became a trusted partner to my stakeholders by recognising my role as a trusted partner and taking only my portion of the work. 2 - FOCUS ON BUSINESS PERFORMANCE METRICS We can deliver the very ‘best’ training but if it doesn’t positively impact workers' KPIs it’s not fit for purpose. We can meet the ‘learning objectives’, gain high satisfaction scores and have a program recommended to colleagues but none of that matters if it doesn’t make a difference to the work and the outcomes of the work. That’s why the KPIs of the workers are also our key metrics if we want to stand for impact. We are by no means responsible for the work but by aligning ourselves with these KPIs we keep ourselves and our stakeholders honest about what we’re in this for. It increases our leverage and our potency. Many of us don’t do this because it seems too hard - and unnecessary - to hold ourselves to such high standards. But the paradox is that it’s easier to do this from the outset of our involvement than it is to figure out whether we made any impact otherwise. 3 - **Due to the character limit, see number 3 in the comments below**
these are keys David, well said. Often seems to be a big discount between organizational initiatives and the training that is rolled out. If L&D wants to shift out of 'order taker' status, its all about aligning to where the strategy & measurement already is
Agreed! I find this pretty ironic. This post was just below yours. Seems like data teams have the same challenges as L&D. 🤷🏻♂️
I wish more L&D leaders worked on this gap they have of being able to show business impact. It's one of the reasons L&D teams are seen as an option for RIF layoffs.
I'm bummed that I have to miss this month's office hours. December's session was super helpful David.
David James 100%. I'll add that L&D leaders should also be mindful about having an organizational structure or functional delivery model that ensures L&D resources are embedded with the business units they support. This gives a kind of "decentralized agility" so L&D isn't only aligned with your very good points above but also makes us directly responsive to the immediate, specific, and relevant needs of the business units.
I think that if you’re in L&D in an organisation that’s not interested in measuring value in this way - then it’s unlikely you’ll be interested in understand how you might introduce this.
💎 thank you for sharing
David James , very well said. I think many L&D leaders either don’t want to be accountable for measuring business outcomes, or, like you wrote, aren’t sure how. In my experience, there are tools and frameworks out there that can definitely help. I just wrote about this here and would love your thoughts on this approach — positive or negative. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ken-stockman-4185253_performanceabrfirstabrlearning-activity-7287511007789305856-EBIT?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
CLO at 360Learning / Host of The Learning & Development Podcast
6mo3 - UNDERSTAND SKILLS AND PROFICIENCY At the other end of the scale from strategy alignment is skills development. But measuring the impact of skills development starts the same way as for the previous one: understanding and quantifying. Skills mapping for roles, teams, departments or orgs is way less work than it used to be and so your ability to understand and quantify can be an AI interaction and stakeholder validation away. With a validated skills map and associated skills assessment you can have the proficiency levels of an entire cohort in your hands in no time at all. This can help you assess your ground zero and then have your stakeholders determine the desired levels of proficiency. With granular information about the nuts and bolts of what it takes to undertake a role you’ll be able to plot hyper-specific development paths for those responsible for the work and track their progress. The measure at the end is that they got there.