When we look at how L&D professionals report learning “success,” it’s typically defined by learner usage and participation. But is there a direct connection between participation in a learning asset and learning success? Can we assume that by showing up, learning has happened and will be applied in the moments where it counts?
We often judge success as having high completion rates, increased attendance and a substantial number of classroom instruction hours. While some take it a step further and define success by learner class ratings and average post-course test scores, senior leaders are often left to wonder what, if any, impact the training department has on the organization as a whole.
For years, L&D professionals have been plagued by how to definitively prove ROI on training programs and have been forced to put the focus on usage and reaction. When we focus on participation, we’re inherently saying the volume of people who take our training is more important than the KPI changes that come from their learning experience. How can we become more confident that our work impacts KPIs?
Action of the Week: Track Transformation of Everyone’s Results
The Track Action of the LCD Model looks beyond just usage and learner reaction and provides the framework to share a complete story about sustained performance improvement that is directly tied to the learning cluster. We have greater confidence that we can track KPI impact because we have created multiple learning assets based on strategically defined learner personas. What happens after the classroom or program is less of a black box when you are delivering Learning Clusters.
While the Track Action is the final action of the LCD Model, in order to track the transformation in an impactful way, we need to return to our strategic performance objective (SPO) that was developed during the first action of the model, the Change Action.
The SPO defines what will improve for the business and what employees will do differently, all as a result of the learning cluster.
By returning to the SPO, we are able to use the Track Action to emphasize metrics that show and tell the transformation we set out to achieve when designing our learning cluster.
When we use the Track Action to report to senior leaders the impact the cluster has on overall performance and business metrics, L&D not only gains sponsorship and support for future learning initiatives but achieves perception as an essential culture-builder in the organization.
