Introduction

Lew Walker

Not long ago I had the opportunity to meet with Gene Pease from his organization, Capital Analytics, Inc., now Vestrics. As our discussion was concluding, Gene left me a copy of his first book, Human Capital Analytics: How to Harness the Potential of Your Organization’s Greatest Asset. When Gene asked if I would be interested in collaborating on this book, I was excited to be given the chance to offer a perspective from the front lines. If you are like me, it’s a challenge to find time to update your skills or read a book with more than 200 pages, but as I had a few minutes here and there, I started reading. After quickly coming to the conclusion that I was not doing the book justice by only reading pieces and parts—and being very interested in the subject—I dedicated time to read it cover to cover. I found that it offers a road map to measure human capital, but more important, how to derive business value via measurement and calculation. From a practitioner’s perspective it showed a clear and comprehensible point of connection between the arcane world of measurement and statistics and the “what have you done for me lately?” mind-set that learning professionals deal with day in and day out today.

Over my professional career I have led every function within a human resources (HR) organization, and some outside it. From that vantage point, I’ve discovered that measuring the impact that training and development have on learners and organizations is the most critical measurement performed within HR.

Organizations make significant investments in their workforces. Compensation, benefits, and opportunities for career growth are all used to engage the workforce and motivate employees to be successful. The essential goal of any organization is for its employees to perform at their highest level. Yet do we really understand the impact of this investment in training? This book left me with a clear picture of how to provide even greater value through training. We have to continue to educate ourselves relative to the importance of measurement, and we need to ensure that business stakeholders see value beyond the less sophisticated ways to measure such as simply asking, “Did they like the training?”

The book resonates with the word optimization. The world is changing, the ways people communicate are changing, and business models are changing. While technology continues to make us more productive, are we optimizing our productivity? Change is difficult, but it keeps us focused on the need to visit and revisit our models and assumptions. The value of optimization is to provide a framework in which to isolate the impact, improve the outcome, and make better decisions.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Working with business leaders, I’ve found they are most concerned with outcomes. How often do we hear them say, “Sounds great, but how is this going to help me solve my problem?” or “increase sales?” or “provide better customer service?”

I remember some years ago having a discussion with a senior executive about investing in training for a group of high-potential managers. After reviewing the proposal and cost, he said, “I believe the best way to develop skills is by placing people into stretch jobs. The ability to manage adversity by stretching them is the best skill builder you can use. But Lew, if you can show me that by sending them to training they will perform better, then I will consider funding it.” Of course, I had no way to prove this other than by relying on the traditional belief that training is the way to raise people’s skills.

This leads me to one of the most important steps we have taken in the field of learning: widespread use of statistically relevant metrics and analytics. CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, and other C-level executives are driven by metrics and analytics. For these roles there is a history of standard metrics that help shape decisions. But do we in the field of learning make it a point to speak the metrics and analytics language? Or do we use learning-speak?

LEARNING METRICS ARE BUSINESS METRICS

When I started my HR career in the mid-1980s as a personnel representative, HR was not an area where analytical minds came to launch a career. In fact, when I started working as the head of HR for a small wireless start-up in the early 1990s, I reported to the CFO. The CEO believed that HR needed the guiding hand of someone who understood the numbers. I am not a numbers person by nature, but I have always been an eager student, with a strong desire to understand how data can be used to help businesses succeed.

The wireless start-up I was working for was acquired in 1994 and shortly thereafter I was fortunate to be named the head of HR of the acquiring company. I was determined to show the president the power of HR data—turnover, cost per hire, and time to fill—all good standard stuff that I had used with leadership in my previous role. I guess those leaders either didn’t understand the data or perhaps weren’t terribly interested in how it could be utilized. In any event, the president asked me two simple questions in one of our first meetings: “What is actionable about this data?” and “Will these actions translate into helping me meet and exceed my business objectives?” Suffice it to say I had not really thought through the action part, and quite frankly had not thought much further than the fact that I had produced data.

Generally speaking, HR professionals and business leaders see the value in HR data, but considering data versus outcomes requires different mind-sets. I have always applied these two simple questions asked of me so many years ago: “What is actionable?” and “How will it help my client meet and exceed objectives?” It is a strong argument in support of measuring and analyzing.

I have led training organizations for different companies as part of my responsibilities. Like many, I struggled to provide realistic measurements of the impact of training. Yes, generally everyone agrees you need to train new hires, you need to raise skills of your workforce, and in some cases you need to reskill your workers to take on new jobs. It always reminds me of the motto of Faber College from the movie Animal House: “Knowledge is good.” However, as learning professionals, we should add, “But even better when we measure and optimize its impact.”

UNDERSTAND THE BUSINESS

Through feedback from many clients, we know that most agree that training is critical to an organization’s success. Most also agree that measurement is important. We possess systems that can provide data on training impact. What then is missing? The ingredient that brings this all together is not only a strong knowledge of the needs of the business, but an intimate knowledge of how the business operates. This knowledge ensures you can speak the language of the business, understand how it operates, and serve as a credible adviser. When combining knowledge of the client’s business with the skill set of a learning professional, learning interventions can be identified that will impact the client’s key business metrics.

BE THE BUSINESS

A few years ago I was discussing learning metrics with a senior client whose organization I supported. When I concluded, he said, “This is all great, but what I want to know is: What have you done to improve my AHT [average handling time] in my call centers?” Having learned my lesson over the years, I was prepared to reinforce the importance of leading with business-impacting metrics. For this and most business leaders, if you’re not delivering the training they need, your other learning metrics are meaningless.

So, are learning metrics meaningless? Of course not. A balanced approach—one where you are utilizing metrics that measure the operational actions of your learning team along with those that reflect the learning impact on the client’s goals and objectives—is important to you and your client.

In order to maximize your learning outcome and to measure the impact to the client’s objectives, it is critical to understand what the measurable impact will be on the learner. First, what are we looking for—increased sales, better call quality, reduced installation time? Second, can the business unit provide the data we need to assess impact—or in some cases, is there a will to provide the data in the time frame in which the measurement is taking place? Finally, are there other initiatives being introduced that may affect the outcome—for example, a new compensation plan, or new processes that reduce installation time?

I have observed, and I think most HR professionals would agree, that business objectives are a critical piece of learning metrics. A few years ago, our company initiated a strong focus on NPS (Net Promoter® Score).1 NPS measures your customers’ willingness to recommend your products and services.

In order to reflect the training objectives, the Level 1 survey must ask learners to weight their willingness to recommend the training and the instructor, rather than how much they liked them. Accordingly, we recently changed the statements to “I would recommend this course to coworkers” and “I would recommend this instructor to a coworker.” This simple change from “like” to “would recommend” shifted the scores downward. The most significant outcome from making this...