Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 39)

to justify an increase in sales-training funding during his tenure as a learning leader. Other departments can be a valuable source of information as training professionals try to show concrete business impact to the C-suite. Do workﬂow calendars become more efﬁcient after a time management seminar? Is there a decrease in call-center tickets that require supervisor intervention? Do sales ﬁgures climb immediately after product-launch training? These are all examples of measureable, business-focused results that can be pulled from training programs and turned into reportable metrics. The Unintentional Beneﬁt By rethinking the way you approach training measurement, you will provide the C-suite with usable information to improve efﬁciency, drive the bottom line and more effectively run business units. And you’ll also reap an unintentional reward: gaining information you can use to improve the cost-effectiveness and efﬁciency of your own programming. According to Expertus research, when making future learning-related decisions, such as course offerings, class scheduling and budgeting, learning leaders most frequently use current training metrics, such as ﬁll rate and percent trained. Yet, as mentioned earlier, 77 percent of these respondents stated these same measurements fell short in providing meaningful intelligence for business planning. So why are learning leaders using the same measurements for business planning as a basis for their departmental decisions? If you’re using these measurements because it’s “what you’ve always done,” you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Aligning learning measurements to the needs of the C-suite not only will help them make more impactful, knowledgeable business decisions, it will also help you do the same. A new approach to measurement also can help you add value to your existing learning technology and, at the same time, decrease departmental spending. Once you acknowledge the value of alternative learning sources, such as wikis, blogs and other informal channels, you can capitalize on these new opportunities and use them to your beneﬁt. By integrating informal learning techniques into your training system, you can lower departmental costs such as instructor fees, travel expenses and facility costs, just to name a few. The Lasting Beneﬁt Our ultimate goal as learning leaders is to improve the way our company does business. We teach company processes and procedures to new hires, time and personnel management skills to our company’s future leaders, and leadership and interpersonal communication techniques to the executive team. However, in today’s economy, we are under increasing pressure to provide justiﬁcation for every dollar spent. By taking a realistic look at our learning systems and becoming advocates of change, we create a culture of relentless improvement — one that impacts the quality of our programming and demonstrates our value to the business as a whole. Gaining the respect of our colleagues, learners and the C-suite: Is there a bigger beneﬁt than that? The result is well worth the effort. Mohana Radhakrishnan is Expertus’ chief consulting strategist and vice president of client services. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. http://www.thetrainingassociates.com http://www.thetrainingassociates.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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