Ways To Decide Whether You Offer Impactful Online Training To Your Employees
How do you know if an online course was successful?
- High engagement?
- Everyone loved it?
- High scores on post-tests?
These are great, but, alone, they don’t convey the value of a program.
The main evidence that proves the success of a course is that it helped to achieve the desired outcome for the business. Be it an increase in sales or improved customer satisfaction score, or even decrease in the on-the-job injuries. If an online program failed to do that, then all other metrics, including the ones mentioned above, lose meaning as well.
However, in spite of how important it is to design impactful online training courses and measure their value for a business, many organizations fail to do so. I can pin at least 2 reasons for that.
Firstly, the problem lies in the traditional perception of the role of an L&D professional. In it, the scope of Learning and Development doesn’t go beyond the execution of 'order for training' from the management and evaluation of how well it was received by learners.
Secondly, it is very hard to measure the actual impact of eLearning on business. Learning professionals usually don’t have the access to such information. And there are hardly any tools that can help them with this kind of work.
This is in contrast to the more straightforward evaluation of learner satisfaction with the training and knowledge assessment. Nowadays, virtually every LMS solution that you may use to create a website for eLearning provides a myriad of tools for this kind of evaluation. So, in this article, we share tips to improve your eLearning and online training, by aligning it with the business. It is inspired by the very insightful book Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation and supported with years of experience in eLearning.
3 Steps To Design eLearning That Brings The Results Your Boss Is Hoping For
The following 3 steps will help you align your eLearning initiatives with the business to design the impactful online training and be clear about its value:
- Diagnose the root cause.
- Set expectations.
- Evaluate the impact on business.
This process begins at the planning stage of your program design, continues throughout the execution, and ends at the evaluation phase. All of these are based on the principles outlined in the Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Evaluation.
Let’s explore each step in detail.
1. Diagnose The Root Cause
Image source: Livestrong.com
The initiation of an eLearning course usually looks like this… The management detects a problem and decides that an online course can solve it. And it is often the management that decides what kind of course is needed (at least the topic). Then, this initiative is passed to a learning professional, who plans, executes, and evaluates the course. But what if the wrong kind of training was chosen? Or even worse, what if the problem cannot be solved with training? Then, all of the subsequent work and investment into creation and execution of the course will go to waste.
In their book, James and Wendy Kirkpatrick, give a very exhibitive example of this:
Maxine (L&D professional) has received a request from Bernie (Sales Manager) to conduct a Product Knowledge training program. Bernie was convinced that this will help to increase sales, which have recently plummeted. Maxime went on to design and deliver a great course, which was very well received by the learners. And the knowledge assessment showed that the participants had left the program with a very good knowledge of the product. However, this DID NOT result in improved sales! It turned out that the product knowledge was not the issue, so the training was a waste.
This happened because Maxine didn’t diagnose the problem of why the training was needed in the first place. Mainly because this kind of work is beyond the scope of the traditional job description of a learning professional.
The best way to avoid this sad situation is to dig to the root cause of the problem. For that, you’d need to partner with the manager who initiated the training and anyone else in your organization, who has the firsthand knowledge of the business problem.
Had Maxine done that, she would have been able to develop the course that could deliver the desired improvement in sales.
For example, the underlying cause of the decrease in sales could be in the lack of sales skills of the sales representatives. Or, a big competitor could have entered the market and taken over part of the market share of the company. So, Maxine could train the reps to compare and position the company’s product against that of the competitors. In both cases, it would have been possible to come up with the most relevant program that’ll help with solving the problem.
2. Set Expectations
Image source: Best Buy
Another major pitfall is the failure to agree with the stakeholders on what success looks like. In other words, both the creator of the course and the management should answer the question: "When the training course should be considered successful?".
The answer can look something like this: "As a result of the course we expect our sales to increase, costs and turnover to decrease". Some programs may have another type of expectations, such as 'decrease in on-the-job injuries' or 'decrease in lawsuits from unhappy clients'.
However, unless you formulate these expectations before designing a course, it will be very hard to derive value after its completion.
Firstly, it will be harder to design the impactful program, as you are unclear of what results it should bring. Secondly, when the training will be over you won’t be able to perform a meaningful evaluation, because you won’t be able to measure what’s most important to the stakeholders.
The best way to prevent this from happening is to have a conversation with all of the stakeholders about their expectations of your program and together arrive at a realistic list of goals.
3. Evaluate The Impact Of Business
Image source: iDreamMart
Traditionally, learning professionals concentrate on evaluating courses only on the following dimensions:
- How well was the training received by learners?
- What have participants learned?
These correspond to the Level 1 (Reaction) and Level 2 (Learn) of the Kirkpatrick’s Training Evaluation Model.
There’s no doubt that the two dimensions are important. If no one liked the training and no one learned anything, then the whole project is a failure.
And it is relatively easy to measure them. There are plenty of tools available on the web, that help to track participation and engagement. And you will also easily find means to assess knowledge and measure learner satisfaction with a course and its materials. Many of those tools are built into the content authoring and LMS solutions that you are probably already using.
However, the reaction to training and the knowledge gained won’t tell you anything about the impact of your course on business.
To evaluate the impact, or as Kirkpatrick put it, Return on Expectations (ROE), you need to measure:
- Did the necessary changes in behavior occur?
- Did we get the desired business outcomes?
Which correspond to Level 3 (Behavior) and Level 4 (Results) of the evaluation model.
So, the logic is as follows… Newly gained knowledge should transform into behavior and that behavior should manifest itself in the desired business outcomes.
By changes in behavior, I mean the on-the-job application of what was learned during your course.
For instance, in the case of a product knowledge course, the success highly depends on whether sales representatives use the newly gained knowledge in their sales pitches and negotiations.
However, it is very challenging to measure changes in behavior. It requires a learning professional to enter a foreign territory of other business departments. And there are little to no systems and tools to assist him/her in this difficult mission.
The same goes for measuring the desired outcomes that should occur as a result of the above-mentioned changes in behavior. For instance, the expected outcomes of a product knowledge course would be an increase of the following KPIs:
- Sales volume.
- Number of new clients.
- Upsell and cross-sell numbers.
There are several challenges associated with measuring these kinds of outcomes. Firstly, they don’t occur immediately after a course, therefore you’d have to conduct a delayed evaluation or even several evaluations. Secondly, this kind of data is not usually available to learning professionals. This means, that you’d have to make partnerships and find ways to get it. And thirdly, standard off-the-shelf LMS solutions are normally not equipped to perform this kind of evaluation.
Nonetheless, only business outcomes can show the value of training. And only this kind of data will help your boss to decide whether he made a good investment or not, and whether to invest in training next time.
How To Improve The Alignment Of Your eLearning With The Business
Designing the impactful training and measuring its outcomes will require a kind of an infiltration into the business beyond the L&D and HR departments. This will mean building strategic alliances and developing systems and tools that will help you do this work.
1. Make Partnerships
All of the above-mentioned points of discovering the root cause, setting expectations and evaluating the impact wouldn’t be impossible without strategic partnerships with the stakeholders.
Each stakeholder can provide a tremendous value by explaining to you what is going on in the trenches and giving you access to the right data. It would be your job then to glue all of those pieces of information together into a clear picture and use it to build an impactful course.
2. Create Custom Evaluation Tools To Measure The Impact
As I’ve already mentioned, there are little to no tools that will help you with the evaluation of behavior and results. We came to this conclusion after conducting our own research and the authors of the Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Evaluation also confirm this situation.
Of course, you can do it 'bare hand', just like there are ways to set fire without matches or a lighter. You can manually dig out the necessary data from various systems your company is using, manually analyze it in spreadsheets and compile into reports.
However, a more efficient route would be to develop custom tools that will automate this work and help you get even more out of the available data. To do that you’d need to integrate your LMS with any other company systems that contain 'behavior' and 'results' data that you need.
Good examples of such systems would be:
- Enterprise Management Systems (ERP).
- Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM).
- Quality Management Systems (QMS).
- Human Resources Management Systems (HRMS).
- Call Center Software.
Virtually any information system can be integrated with an LMS to feed the necessary data into it. The kind of integration needed will depend on the data you require to measure the impact of your eLearning program.
Here, we are talking about the two kinds of data:
- 'Behaviors' that show how learners apply what they’ve learned on the job to get to the desired outcomes.
- Indicators of results that show whether the desired business outcomes have been achieved.
Some examples of each type of data:
| Behavior | Results |
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Of the 2 types of data, it is harder, but not impossible, to mine the behavior data.
Employee behavior is often already automatically tracked in one way or the other. For instance, many types of Human Resources Management systems have features like performance evaluation and compliance management. There are also Call Center Management systems that track the activity of each operator on an hourly basis or Quality Management systems that track defect rate and compliance among others.
So, depending on what are the critical behaviors that should change as a result of your course, you can search for the relevant sources of data in your organization.
And it is likely that not all critical behaviors you are interested in are already tracked by someone in your company. So you’d have to set up systems for that yourself and probably do it manually or semi-automatically.
As for the leading indicators, these are a bit easier to monitor, since by their definition they are so important that they should already be tracked by your company.
For example, company revenue, costs, and sales volume among others are already closely watched in the company’s ERP or/and accounting systems.
The next question is, as soon as you found the right systems and the right data, what do you do with it?
We suggest integrating your LMS system with the other systems that contain the necessary data to do the following:
- Set benchmarks before the beginning of your course so that later you could measure the behaviors and results against them.
- Create dashboards to monitor the changes in the most important indicators during the course.
- Create custom reports to evaluate the changes immediately after the training and at set time intervals (delayed evaluation).
These tools will be a great addition to the arsenal of tools that is already available within your LMS (focused on the reaction and knowledge evaluation).
Conclusion
An eLearning course can be considered successful only when it brings the desired outcomes for the business. Thus, the best way to improve eLearning is to establish a firm connection between L&D and the business.
To do that we must follow 3 steps. Firstly, we have to deeply understand the business problem that is being addressed and come up with the right training solution. Secondly, we need to agree with the stakeholders on what success should look like, i.e. what outcomes the program is expected to bring. Thirdly, we need to measure the degree to which the training program has delivered the expected outcomes for business (the value).
These 3 ways to improve online learning will be impossible without strategic partnerships within your organization. You will need to partner with colleagues who have firsthand knowledge of the business problem, as well as the management that envisions and plans the company’s growth.
And lastly, to carry out this mission successfully, you will need to prepare some weaponry. You can upgrade your LMS by adding the evaluation features that will measure the impact of your eLearning on business.
Do you think you can leverage these strategies to improve online learning in your organization?!
If you have any questions regarding this article, don’t hesitate to comment below.
