ALIGNING TRAINING INVESTMENT WITH ROI AND BUSINESS GOALS

By Andrew Leigh-co-founder of Maynard Leigh Associates

Many responsible managers and training experts firmly believe that corporate investment in training and development must be evaluated.

For example, in A Practical Guide to Training Evaluation, Erik van Vulpen emphasises the importance of measuring the impact of training investments and provides practical advice on evaluating training programs.

According to the Training Industry Report, US companies spent over $82.5 billion on training in 2020. The pandemic accelerated the need for remote training, making evaluation seem even more critical. Despite this, only some companies prioritise checking whether the investment aligns with maximising ROI or revenue growth.

Organisations use various techniques to evaluate training programs. Five commonly trusted ones are

• The ubiquitous Kirkpatrick Model is a widely used framework that assesses training at four levels: reaction, learning, behaviour, and results.
• The Phillips ROI Model focuses on return on investment (ROI) by measuring the monetary value of training outcomes.
• The Brinkerhoff Success Case Method: Identifies success stories and challenges to understand training impact.
• The CIRO Model combines qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate training effectiveness. The CIPP Model: Evaluates context, input, process, and product aspects of training.

Despite these ways to quantify the benefits of training investment, tying the expenditure of developing people to measurable returns remains more an aspiration than a source of assurance. ?

It is also not a mystery why so many training investments escape rigorous evaluation. Even when cost-effective ways exist to assess the impact of a training input, at least five obstacles make it less attractive to busy and impatient executives.

GOALS:

Despite the prevalence of “business goals,” when scrutinised, many do not meet the minimum of SMART Goals--Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Recorded, and Time-Limited. This limitation makes maximising ROI a more questionable metric.

Shareholders may demand maximisation, yet achieving this may need to factor in less quantifiable metrics such as caring for the environment, building the corporate culture, or generating a solid market position or brand. This makes the training investment harder and more costly to obtain.

LINKAGES:

Training may be a desirable corporate investment, yet seldom obtains a significant share of discretionary resources. Consequently, insisting on establishing credible links between the training investment and its impact on ROI and growth often proves costly.

When leaders, managers, and even HR professionals demand clear linkages between training, ROI, and development, they usually retreat into the mindset, "We’ll know if the training is effective.”

Such a response can be sensible for specific personal development programs. For example, with Presentation Training, you can notice significant improvements in a person’s impact the next time they present.? That seems to satisfy many managers.

PRIORITIES:

At Maynard Leigh Associates, we developed “Progressit?, an evaluation tool relevant to any training programme.

It provides HR, managers, and leaders with quantified feedback on training impact. Participants gave feedback on their self-perceived performance.

Managers also record whether they recognise specific behavioural changes. The overall results are based on measurable behaviour and, by implication, a particular level of impact on ROI.

In practice, managers commonly feel such robust evaluation is not worth the cost of extracting performance scores.

For example, Presentation skills training seems widely perceived as effective because

"We can see the difference in our people’s accurate presentations."

This begs the more fundamental question: did the better presentations make any perceptible difference to the bottom line of ROI and Growth?

In practice, most managers are satisfied with the more limited perception that “we can see the difference”.

Few willingly pay the price for operating “Progressit”, even though the added cost to a training program is marginal. Busy managers are not keen to sign off on perceived behaviours on which any ROI can be based.

CONCLUSION

Where evaluation of the training investment revolves around tangible gains such as sales performance, customer satisfaction, and safety incidents, evaluation may be on safer grounds.

Less so for the more intangibles of personal development, such as learning empathy, reframing, relationships, and networking.

Many organisations rely solely on participant, manager, and stakeholder feedback without a rigorous link from training to ROI and Growth.

Asking about perceived effectiveness, relevance, and areas for improvement may help training investors to achieve the ideal of being assured that the training investment is indeed aligned with business goals and ROI.

?

See also: A Guide To Evaluating Training Success With Pre- and Post-training Assessments, April 27, 2023Mike Szczesny.

?

. c:\users\andrew\downloads\aligning training with business goals to maximise ROI and revenue growth.docx