In a previous blog post, we explored the reasons why it’s more important than ever to align your training programs to core business objectives.
Business objectives serve as the guiding light for an organization, defining its purpose, direction, and measures of success. Therefore, it’s essential for L&D professionals to carefully align their training initiatives with these objectives to ensure their relevance and effectiveness.
However, beyond finding alignment of your programs, you’ll want to ensure you have processes in place to measure, evaluate and evidence the success of these programs.
Here we’ll share some easy ways that you can begin to demonstrate and communicate the value of your training programs.
Selecting the right measurement methods is akin to choosing the appropriate tools for a craft – it ensures accuracy, efficiency, and ultimately, success. When it comes to evaluating the impact of training programs, this step becomes even more critical.
Cognota’s Program Strategy module leverages the ROI Institute’s methodology, and allows you to measure objectives related to your programs at the Reaction, Learning and Application objective levels.
- Reaction Objectives — Your learners’ experience is important. Engaged and satisfied learners are the foundation for a successful program. What reactions does this program need to elicit?
- Learning Objectives — What new skills and/or competencies should learners gain from this program?
- Application Objectives — “Application” refers to how the knowledge and skills gained through this learning program should be applied. What behavior changes should this program influence?
When defining your objectives, it’s important to think through your measurement and data collection methods and document your evaluation approach.
Common data collection methods include:
Focus Group: A focus group can be employed to gauge the success of an L&D program by gathering qualitative feedback from participants regarding their experiences, perceptions, and the application of newly acquired knowledge and skills. Through structured discussions and exploration of key themes, focus groups provide valuable insights that inform program refinement and alignment with organizational objectives.
Interview: Interviews can be utilized to measure the success of an L&D program by engaging participants in in-depth discussions to gather nuanced feedback on their learning journey, including challenges, achievements, and the transfer of skills to their roles. Through personalized conversations, interviews offer insights into individual experiences and perceptions, aiding in the identification of program strengths and areas for improvement.
Questionnaire: A questionnaire can effectively measure the success of an L&D program by gathering structured feedback from participants on specific aspects such as content relevance, training delivery methods, and perceived skill improvement. With targeted questions designed to elicit quantitative and qualitative responses, questionnaires provide a systematic approach to assess program impact, identify areas of strength, and pinpoint opportunities for enhancement.
Survey: Surveys serve as valuable tools for measuring the success of an L&D program by collecting quantitative data on participant satisfaction, perceived learning outcomes, and the application of acquired skills in the workplace. With structured questions and response options, surveys provide a scalable and efficient method for gathering feedback from a broad participant base, enabling L&D professionals to identify trends, assess program effectiveness, and inform future improvements.
With each of these collection methods you’ll also want to consider the following:
Data Source: Who are you going to focus the data collection on? Are you interested in insight from participants, facilitators, managers, direct reports, business partners or external partners.
Number of Respondents: What is the sample size you are looking to collect data from? For example, you’ll want to consider what a reasonable amount of data is and how aligned that is to the data collection method. Interviews and Focus Groups might be smaller in scope than questionnaires and surveys.
Data Collection Timing: You’ll also want to think through when you’ll collect your data. Is it immediately after the completion of the program or a month after? Is it recurring or one-time?
Once you have decided on your measurement method and evaluation approach, you’ll want to align on how you’re going to capture your results.
It’s important that the data collected is available to stakeholders in both raw and consolidated forms.
When you look to report on the performance of a learning program, having this aggregated and summarized data can be an important lever in demonstrating the overall impact.
In future blogs, we’ll share more about how you can track the impact of your training programs and begin to calculate the ROI of these programs.
We’d love to hear how you are evaluating and evidencing your training programs. Share your comments with other users at learnops.com.
