Knowledge Infusion Center of Excellence: Consultant's Corner : Tags : intelligence

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.

1 Comments Permalink Tags: kirkpatrick, measurement, analytics, learning_management, intelligence, scorecard

Over the past two decades, countless academics, researchers and thought leaders have tried to prove the value of human capital. None have succeeded in developing a definitive, iron-clad quantitative model.

But I ask the simple question WHY? WHY is this an important question to answer? What is the VALUE in the answer? And what could we do DIFFERENTLY or BETTER if we did develop such a model?

When building talent management strategies for companies, I spend about 1/3 of my time working with business leaders, CEO’s, CFO’s, General Managers responsible for P&L, as well as line managers with a handful of direct reports. I’ve worked with over a hundred companies over the past 3 years and never once have I met a business leader who needed quantitative proof of the value of human capital. They know it. They get it. They live it.

In fact, business leaders understand at an even more fundamental level than many HR practitioners the importance of talent. I have countless stories of business leaders who rattle off during the course of an interview the financial impact of human capital to their business. Here a few:

The VP of Operations for a large manufacturer who quoted the exact dollar amount of lost revenue due to the inability to fill a plant maintenance worker position
The head of engineering for high tech company who cites talent issues as the reason for a delayed product launch
The GM of a well-known US retailer who fires off the opportunity cost (framed in terms of revenue and profit) of high turnover

It is undisputed by business that engaged talent with the right skills, competencies, and knowledge in the right job leads to higher levels of business results.

Let’s stop battling windmills and choose a more worthy opponent. Let’s instead take on the following:

What business measures do business leaders care about?
How do talent attributes (skills, competencies, performance ratings, potential, source of hire, experience, engagement, learning agility, etc.) correlate with these measures?
And finally, how can HR and the business jointly take ACTION to influence these attributes and drive higher levels of business results?

These questions CAN be answered, are starting to be answered by leading HR organizations, and drive significant value into the business.