For every HR professional with a keen understanding of the value of effective e-learning on employee output and engagement, there is an accountant eager to compress the entire program into their ROI formula.
ROI, or return on investment, is calculated by dividing the cost of investment by the result of the investment in terms of a ratio or percentage.
This usually leads to frustration because the results of well-trained employees are not always experienced immediately. Learning has a cumulative effect on people in workplaces, and sometimes a skill or technique taught during the first quarter of the year doesn’t really have significant impact until rush season hits later on.
E-Learning is also highly individual. An employee who has great potential, but little experience, might require a higher investment in e-learning. Learning a new way to do something or a new perspective on a routine task may yield continuing innovation that impacts the company’s bottom line tremendously in the years that follow.
These arguments must be balanced against every department’s need to have systems of measurement to justify time, money and brain power invested.
One way HR can counter the ROI request is to prepare their own measurement system for all training programs. You can create a “Four R Program” for example. The four R’s being: Response, Results, Revisions and Review.
Response studies the way employees took to the training offered. If e-learning modules were offered, what was the response rate of employees who voluntarily signed up? Of the employees who engaged in the e-learning program, how many completed the program? That is another response measurement.
Results look at the practical learning component of the e-learning module. Specifically, what skills or techniques were taught to the employees? How would acquiring these skills help the employees to do their jobs better and contribute positively to the bottom line? As a result of the skills learned, how is the company better positioned to take on a challenge in the future?
Revision addresses the issue that when investments are calculated, what thought is being given to improving the process in the future? Having an excellent feedback system in place where employees can offer practical examples of how they are incorporating their e-learning into the daily challenges of doing their jobs is a powerful way to express this. If employees are also asking for further training on a particular subject, or if their initial training exposed a weakness in a certain part of the sales or production procedures of a company, these too are part of the revision process that must be discussed. There is value to having weaknesses and strengths clarified if a company is to grow successfully.
Results look at those tangible things that can be measured. For example, if after e-learning, your sales staff demonstrated increased sales, your production staff demonstrated increased production statistics, or your marketing staff put together an extremely effective campaign, the correlations between learning and results should be noted.
Every program of measuring the results of e-learning should also pose the most essential consideration of all. That is, what would be the results of having no training? How would the company propose to enhance the skill of the employees, grow with increasingly complicated technology, and reach into new markets without providing workers with the skills and techniques to rise to such challenges?
Companies who invest in staff training have to spend money, and there is no escape from that; however, companies who don’t, may actually be paying a higher cost in the long run.
