How do you benchmark and compare your training ROI with industry standards and best practices?

I was invited to contribute to this article, but it is so outdated, I’d rather not. But while I am here: Skills growth Behavioural change Cultural change Network growth And performance change are all return on the investment. These can only be monetised if any training intervention is undertaken against a clear goal to increase revenue or reduce cost… and uses a control group. Anything else is not measuring ROI ????♂?

One of the great advantages of buying an employee development product or program vs. building a custom one is the ability to benchmark across organizations. SaaS-based products in particular, often share platform benchmarks so you can compare various key metrics like usage, growth, satisfaction, or other impact against other customers/users in a true apples-to-apples fashion. And before sharing your own organization's performance on these metrics with others, set goals and share benchmarks IN ADVANCE. Often executives in the business have unrealistic expectations of what good looks like, so sharing up front how a program will be measured and the typical results in peer organizations sets an anchor point for them.

ROI on learning is an often used and abused terms and honestly many who talk about it have a tough time defining it. ROI in my opinion is realized over a long period of time and to a large extent cannot be monetized. E.g. You may be able to monetize efficiency by calculating the time saved and hourly rate etc. but you cannot monetize the happiness or reduced stress that the learner experiences by being efficient. There can be other invisible benefits of efficiency, like better mental health, lower absenteeism, lower healthcare cost for the company. I will suggest focus on ROE (Return on Expectation) rather than ROI. For more https://learningpool.com/return-on-investment-vs-return-on-expectation-analysing-the-true-value-of-your-training/

Great article. When I was in Management, I would track performance of an a learner before and after training opportunities in particular one on one on person trading and the ROI was always there. The opportunity to show value, share insights and best practices to a Field Tech always payed off.

The way in which training is presented to learners says a lot about an organisation. High quality training that truly engages learners, will demonstrate how much the organisation values them, and in turn contributes towards better morale and staff retention as well as better focus throughout the session. Training that has been done on the cheap, with the minimal amount of effort to save costs, may tick a box and get the job done. However, it won't engage learners and may actually lead to retraining requests; wasting time, money and affecting staff availability. Whilst ROI is important, training feedback scores or surveys can provide useful insights into what can transform okay training, into exceptional training.