Chief Learning Officer - September 2007 - (Page 47)

productivity When you endeavor to try to know what you don’t know, we call that a readiness assessment — it is a planning tool to help identify gaps in existing strategies and processes. Readiness assessments accomplish three goals: 1. They provide guidance for what you don’t know about learning analytics. 2. They aid in building a learning measurement strategy. 3. They document gaps in the current “as is” state versus the future “should be” state. The readiness assessment is administered using a focus group or interview, or it is accomplished self-sufficiently via a survey. Interviews are optimal because the interviewer can use the oneon-one interaction to drill down into specific components and seek details and examples. The goal of the interview is to thoroughly understand the “as is” state. There are four main components to a learning measurement readiness assessment: stakeholders, strategy, process and technology. Finally, the assessment should ensure the metrics stakeholders desire will be presented in a way that leads to timely and useful data for decision making. This is known as actionable data, and there are four ways to achieve this that should be investigated during the assessment: • Benchmarks: Do stakeholders value internal and external benchmarks to use as points of reference in interpreting their own data? • Goals: Can learning and development establish challenging yet attainable goals to show actual performance against stated goals? • Trends: Can learning and development measure consistently and repeatedly to derive trends so stakeholders know whether the metrics are moving in the right direction? • Color coding: Do existing stakeholder metrics present information in a manner that is easy to read with a red-yellowgreen analysis to quickly pinpoint opportunities? Stakeholders’ analysis for learning metrics is important because they use the information — success is more certain if aligned with stakeholders’ desired outcomes. Stakeholders Stakeholders represent the consumers of learning metrics. These might include: • Instructors • Instructional designers • Organizational development managers • Learning and development vice president • Chief learning officer • Line of business manager • Executive management Understanding stakeholder needs is a way to identify the types of metrics that are of interest to these consumers. Some key questions to ask the learning and development organization with respect to this audience include: 1. Do you know who the key stakeholders for learning metrics are? 2. For what specific metrics are these stakeholders looking? 3. Are there specific reports available to meet their needs? 4. How satisfied are these stakeholders with the timeliness and usefulness of learning metrics today? Further, the assessment should tackle the metrics balance, as different stakeholders have diverse needs. The assessment should look at the following four broad areas to assess stakeholder needs: • Operational data: Is there a need for activity data (e.g., number of students trained)? • Performance data: Is there a need to show how well you train as opposed to how much you train (e.g., satisfaction scores or linkage to business results)? • Financial data: Is there a need to show fiscal stewardship? (e.g., learning and development budget to actual or learning and development budget as a percent of payroll)? • Cultural data: Is there a need to cultivate an environment that supports learning and finds it strategic (e.g., the number of external awards or internal recognition points learning and development has received)? Strategy Strategy is developing the approach to learning metrics. This is reviewed in a learning measurement-readiness assessment to understand the methodology and functional design of the learning analytics process. Some key questions to ask during this phase of the assessment include: 1. Do you have a strategy? Is it practical to implement? 2. Does the strategy focus on impact and ROI? 3. Does the strategy consider benchmarking? 4. Does the strategy consider standards and consistencies? 5. Does the strategy provide meaningful information in a timely manner? It is challenging to build an analytics policy or process without an overlying strategy. Hence, the importance of this section — if key decisions on what, how and when to measure are not answered, there is a risk that learning will be measured inconsistently and will not be comparable across the organization. Further, effort is likely to be duplicated, additional cost is likely to be incurred and timeliness of providing metrics likely will be prolonged. Because of these risks, the organization must have business rules or standards for learning measurement strategy. Some core rules, which ought to be included in a measurement strategy, might be: • The key performance indicators for the learning and development organization. • The measurement protocols or standards (especially for evaluation). • The linkage to business strategy. • The linkage to credible measurement methodology. • A process to execute the strategy. I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 47 September 2007 http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

Editor's Letter Contents Letters to the Editor Strategies Selling up, Selling Down Take Five Imperatives Guest Editorial Learning Solutions Embarking on a Learning Journey Clo Profile Environment CIGNA Service Operations: Making Strategic Change Happen, and Making It Stick Tactics Black & Decker: On-Demand Learning Creation and Consumption Productivity The Army You Have Human Capital Holiday Inn Express: Delivering Critical Training Globally Case Study: Tegan Jones Business Intelligence Case Study: Lisa Rummler Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

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