A Framework for Improving Business Outcomes with Data Driven Learning Strategies
In a previous article, we shared a method for up-leveling your Learning and Development (L&D) team and strategy (Rapid Business Change Demands Adaptable Learning Strategy: 10 Best Practices). In this article, we shed light on a critical next step, which is using data analysis to drive your strategy, objectives, and outcomes to your business’s bottom line.
Executive leaders in today’s organizations want to see where and how L&D is making an impact. It’s not enough to be a cost center and create learning assets anymore. We’re past the point where leveraging data is an aspiration - it’s an expectation.
Here, we walk you through the process of creating a data-driven learning strategy. You'll see how data analytics can be used by your L&D team to improve the learner journey, content development, and revenue generation optimization.
Using data to prove L&D is a valuable business investment
L&D teams need to be able to drive measurable business outcomes and show a return on investment.
Executives across business functions are turning a sharper focus on L&D teams with higher expectations on training impact. They want to see proof that their organization’s investments in learning are paying off - in terms of improving employee skills, KPIs (key performance indicators), and business objectives and profits.
Successful L&D teams are finding new ways to remain viable and show a positive ROI (return on investment). Amazon, for example, encourages scrappiness to keep costs low and spark innovation while Microsoft is focused on continuous improvement.
“As organizations increasingly look to data to help them in their transformation efforts, it’s important to remember that this doesn’t just mean having more data or better charts. It’s about mastering the organizational muscle of using data to make better decisions; to hypothesize, experiment, measure and adapt. It’s not easy. But through careful collection and analysis of the right data, a major transformation can be a little less daunting – and hopefully a little more successful.” (Harvard Business Review)
Using data to glean actionable insights
To take advantage of deeper insights into your learning metrics, make the move from Little Data to Big Data Analysis. Little Data is sometimes referred to as “butts in seats” and usually tracks the basics - the number of participants, courses, hours, costs, completion dates, participant reaction and amount learned. Little Data doesn’t go far enough in today’s world. Big Data, on the other hand, is much richer and provides greater insights for learning decision-making.
Descriptive insights hold hidden facts on learner activity, interaction, and learning patterns and behaviors. They can be used to inform your design for learning-in-the-flow-of-work and where social learning and gaming (earning rewards and badges) has the most benefits.
Personalization and adaptivity insights reveal training effectiveness, learner preferences, and usage patterns that can be used to create personalized and adaptive learning strategies and programs. They can be used for skills mapping and career development planning.
Predictive insights speculate a learner’s future actions and workplace environments. For example, if the insights indicate that busy professionals or managers are doing better with on-the-go learning, new learning strategies can focus on more flexible options. In this way, the return on investment (ROI) for your training programs can also be more accurately forecasted.
Framework for a data-driven L&D strategy
The measurement of training performance today needs to go beyond engagement rates and directly tie training courses to overall organizational performance. This requires L&D teams to ask the right questions before, during and after investments in training and tool their technology to collect the right data. Focus on and measure desired business outcomes (increase sales revenue, decrease safety violations), in addition to focusing on outputs (150 sales associates completed training, 75% of warehouse employees passed safety test). How can you ensure your data tells an organizational performance story that proves ROI? Here are key best practices for your team to adopt:
Identify stakeholder key performance indicators. What measurements are they tracking for their area of the business and why (e.g. employee retention, warehouse safety and accident patterns, IT security, or sales revenue). In what forums are stakeholders reporting their metrics to the business? What tools are they using for tracking and reporting?
Acquire tools and create procedures for collecting, analyzing, and reporting learning data and results. Ensure your tools have visualization capabilities to turn your data into compelling stories, dashboards, charts, and graphs to reveal trends and patterns that might otherwise be hard for people to see. In the article, 4 Reasons You Should Be Using Power Apps, we demonstrate how Microsoft Power Apps can help businesses empower their workforce, save money building apps, simplify the development process, and scale quickly without compromising quality or security.
Align training course content and metrics to stakeholder KPIs, which creates a sort of chain of evidence that will demonstrate the impact of learning once data is collected and shared.
Align with stakeholder reporting and cadence to share L&D data and insights and showcase the cross-departmental contribution of L&D to business performance.
Steps to creating a data-driven learning strategy that impacts the bottom line
Implementing the framework outlined above, you can plan, drive and communicate the impact of your learning programs’ contribution to the business. Use the following step by step instructions to create a data driven learning strategy:
Identify your L&D team’s objectives. Map them to the key business objectives of the company as a whole.
Prioritize your objectives and meet with stakeholders. Which items are business-critical, and which are lower priorities? Which other players will be involved in your decision-making process and what matters most to them?
Ensure your L&D team is asking the right Big Data questions and collecting the relevant data before, during and after training initiatives.
Collect the training data into a centralized tool, like PowerBI where you can create reports, dashboards, and graphical visualizations. These outputs will be most impactful if you are including data from your business stakeholders to tell the L&D-business partnership story. If your business stakeholders are already using a centralized tool, ensure that your L&D data is being included and that you are able to access the toolset to conduct your analysis and reporting.
Review and analyze the data with other leadership. Each stakeholder brings his or her own insights and abilities to the table, so you’ll get the clearest picture when you compare ideas and observations. In the Prime 8 world, we often see this happen in Monthly or Quarterly Business Reviews.
With this collaborative analysis and resulting insights in hand, begin crafting your L&D strategy. Lay the foundation of your action plan — what needs to happen next? Break this down into tangible milestones and communicate them with your team.
Continue to measure performance and relevant metrics after implementing your strategy. It’s an ongoing process that improves with time. Track key metrics on your dashboard to objectively measure performance as you launch your new objectives and make adjustments over time.
Follow the Money!
Remember to keep your eye on the prize (your learning ROI) and follow the money (how your L&D team is impacting the business bottom line) in your learning strategy.
Prime 8 has the experience needed to support or drive the effort to uplevel your L&D team in part or as a complete holistic program:
Evaluating, planning, and delivering reskilling and upskilling to your team.
Planning and implementing a data-driven learning strategy.
Creating modern learning solutions that drive innovation, accelerate outcomes, and enable break-through business results.
Driving and supporting change management efforts.
To see how we’ve helped other companies adapt, take a look at a few more of our customer stories or reach out to learning@prime8consulting.com with any questions you have.
