In speaking with a lot of learning and development professionals lately, I hear that a lot of them are not concerned with 'butts-in-seats' for classroom training or 'eyeballs' or completions for online courses. Rather they are concerned with more strategic measures such as knowledge transfer and ROI. Some of them have even relegated attendance to a lowly Level 0 on Kirkpatrick's famous 4-level impact scale, which starts at level 1, stating that such reports are useless.
I think this view is a little extreme. In fact, I think that while 'butts-in-seats' as a measure is transactional, it is foundational in that it can lend strategic insights into the value of learning investments and lead to better decisions on how to allocate those investments going forward. For instance:
It matters to a Chief Compliance Officer that every manager took part in the sexual harassment training. Without any needed proof of knowledge transfer or understanding in any state of which I am aware (sad), attendance is all you really have.
Several senior business leaders with whom I've spoken want to know that their potential successors are taking part in the accelerated leadership development programs they were involved in designing for the good of the long-term health of the company.
The head of product marketing wants to know that all salespeople and channel partners have sat through training on the new black-box, which is now available for sale 4 weeks ahead of the company's nearest competitors' black-box.
The head of customer training is concerned about butts-in-seats because its directly tied to the top line of her P&L. She is also interested in the average price charged per learner.
The CLO cares because he wants to know what courses are in high-demand and which ones should be put out to pasture.
While I don't subscribe to obsessing over transactional measures like attendance or training departmental measures such as how much you spend on catering, I do feel that you do need spend some time tracking them in order to tie training to business value via quality and efficiency. I'd love to hear how you're approaching your T&D measurement strategy.
Interesting post. In some regards, I don't know how L&D can aspire to "strategic" measures. Knowledge Transfer is not "strategic," it's a measure of the effectiveness of the department. And ROI comes first and foremost from supporting learning in areas that are critical to the business and its future.
If L&D means "strategic" and ROI in the sense that they can track whether people are absorbing information and applying new skills that are key to executing strategy, then no, butts-in-the-seats doesn't get you very far. But on the other hand, the evidence should show up in the financials.