1. PLAN

The first step to develop an effective strategy is to begin by identifying the business goal that is going to be served by the training, in order to make sure that the learning solution is the right fit for the intended goal. It is important to think about training metrics to help guide your path forward before you design the training.

Involving business partners at this stage will help create alignment of strategy and goals, and promote the buy-in that will allow you to create a training effectiveness baseline pre-launch to measure against after the training is launched. Change management planning is essential to success.

2. MEASURE 

After completing the plan, the next step is to gather and report on the data using visualizations. It will be important to consider whether to collect both engagement and performance data. Keep in mind that you will not be able to measure the same training metric for every learning solution; it depends on the intervention. It is best to consider what the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are that are indisputable, easy to get measurement from, and that can be acted on. You may want to consider the following to determine the KPIs:

1. Use the generated reports and visualizations to analyze trends. You may compare a learner’s activity with others in the same program, with learners who have previously taken the course, or against the course rubrics.

2. Empathy interviews, with end users, managers, stakeholders and other benefactors, as part of a design thinking process, are powerful on the front end and throughout the development process to gather qualitative results.

Make sure you are intentional in the data that you are collecting. Gathering data you won’t use in your training evaluation is wasteful and can cause confusion.

3. ACT

Once you have collected and analyzed the data from your training metrics, you will find areas to improve the learning solution over time. Create checkpoints to gather data to show improvement regular intervals, such as 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. This way you will be able to iterate your training to improve it overtime.

Most importantly, remember that the way to engage employees is to provide them with opportunities to learn and develop new competencies. Research suggests that lifelong learning contributes to happiness. When highly engaged employees are challenged and given the skills to grow and develop within their chosen career path, they are more likely to be energized by new opportunities at work and satisfied with their current organization.

Working with our clients, we use diagnostics to track the desired performance impact and to make iterative improvements on the effectiveness of the learning solutions over time.