Making Learning & Development Work – Part 1: Learning Effectiveness

(Disclaimer: all thoughts are my own and do not reflect those of my company)

Many years ago, I asked a skip-level leader at my company how she knew I was effective in my role since she had never seen a single thing I produced.

“That’s easy,” she said, “I look at your pipeline.”

“Pipeline…?”

The leader explained that because I got pulled into a variety of projects to help multiple teams throughout the organization, they were seeing something I did that provided value to them enough to give “referrals” and “repeat business.” It was during this conversation that I had an epiphany: nobody ever technically *needs* to use the L&D function; most companies have existed and done quite well without one. Any person in any part of the organization can throw together a training session that does a decent job conveying information. The business only voluntarily goes to the L&D team if there is something it’s providing that they deem to be of value.

These were interesting concepts to consider. As professionals in the corporate education space, we think about learning effectiveness a lot and how we measure it. Sure, we can measure how much someone enjoyed the thing we created and maybe get a self-report of how it will help them back on the job. But self-reported surveys or focus groups only take us so far.

These are the metrics I now look at to gauge effectiveness and impact on the things I directly work on (and have applied the same to teams I've led):

1. My work is recommended to others in the company
2. People are using the frameworks, concepts or language introduced during my sessions in their casual conversations and work discussions (not just saying they'll use them but actually using them)
3. People ask me what else I have in my arsenal to help them with other things or invite me into discussions on things I hadn't helped them with before

These have become the true indicators for me on whether or not L&D is working and whether I'm effective at my job. The challenge is that it can take time (sometimes a few weeks, sometimes many months) before any of these things happen, if they happen at all. That can get tricky as it’s a bit of a waiting game based on faith in the absence of evidence. But seriously, when any of these three things happens, it feels like a huge win!

Metrics I don't use to gauge learning impact (although the information can be very useful for other design purposes):

• Whether someone enjoyed the experience.
• How many experiences were offered (volume)
• How many people attended (unless they were there based on a recommendation/referral)

How do you measure learning effectiveness in your work outside of surveys and focus groups?