More than $70 billion is spent globally on corporate training. It’s a huge investment that is integral to both employee success and business outcomes. Deloitte reports that better learning opportunities are one of the largest drivers of employee engagement and a strong workplace culture, yet it’s rarely considered as a part of the business strategy. Rather, learning is often viewed as an expenditure factored into the annual budget.
Corporate training is much more than that.
The ROI Institute reports that 96 percent of CEOs want their company’s training programs to have a direct business impact, yet only 8 percent currently see that impact. What’s more, while 74 percent of CEOs are looking for a clear ROI for their training programs, only 4 percent of CEOs have identified that ROI.
The corporate training investment can actually be a profit driver when it’s done efficiently and effectively. But CLOs must illustrate that corporate training can impact ROI to prove its value and to be viewed through the same lens as CMOs and COOs.
Focus on the Employee
Corporate training has historically been a mandatory part of employee onboarding, delivered through a one-size-fits-all approach. But the talent market is changing, and learning leaders need to adapt to meet employee demands. Employees value better training and development opportunities more than ever before, and many see professional development as one of the most valuable assets a business can provide. In fact, 40 percent of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year.
To recruit and retain top talent, companies must help employees develop and refine professional skills that will not only help them grow and learn, but that will also help the organization succeed by better preparing employees for the workforce. Employees will feel that the company is making an investment in them – a major factor in retention. And companies will see the impact that better training has on their business outcomes when employees are better prepared for their jobs.
By shifting away from the “it’s the way we’ve always done it” mentality and focusing on the employee, CLOs can prove to other leaders the real business value of corporate training. With personalized training, a new-to-market approach based on learning data, behavior patterns and artificial intelligence, training delivery can match each employee’s unique learning style. Access to analytical learning data can help companies better predict employees’ comprehension, retention and application of training material based on behavior and performance metrics captured in the course. When companies improve performance in these key learning areas, they are, in turn, helping employees to learn more effectively, translating to increased overall ROI and better workforce preparedness.
Evaluate True Learning Outcomes
Many corporate learning programs are currently measured based on survey data and results such as employee satisfaction, hours of training completed, and scores from tests and quizzes after training is over. While these forms of measurement do illustrate some results, they don’t evaluate the real-time success of a training course, especially since time spent in training doesn’t correlate with knowledge transfer.
Prescriptive and predictive learning analytics can help learning leaders predict employee success early in training. Analytics and artificial intelligence can make predictions about indicators such as an employee’s likelihood to pass a course and future engagement with training based on how they interact with content. These predictions help learning leaders understand what information an employee already knows and what he or she still needs to learn, so training can be personalized to each employee’s needs.
The individualized training approach not only leads to more successful training but also to happier employees who are better prepared for their jobs. Prescriptive and predictive analytics enable the development of new strategies to improve future performance and better align training initiatives with business objectives. And leadership will finally see the payoff on training investments down the line.
Caroline Brant is director of client success at Zoomi.
