The SIMMPLE Model for Evaluating Corporate Learning

Learning and Development functions (or Learning and Performance functions as I like to call them) have been struggling for decades to demonstrate any business return directly attributable to their activity. It is now no surprise that budgets are being reduced in this area.

This has led to a whole host of products which promise to demonstrate the ROI attributable to learning, however, no tool can be as powerful as one built in house... no external supplier or tool can know the ‘above the line’ or Organisational, activity which may be occurring at the same time as training and which could be driving those extra sales results

I have written previous articles on why there are internal cultural barriers which prevent measurement from taking place, but there has also been a void in L&D functions ability to understand data. Specifically, what data should be used, how it should be joined together, and how it can be used to optimise outcomes (and ultimately, prove the L&D value to the business in a robust way). In this article, I will show you exactly the data you need to get your L&D analytics function off the ground, for immediate results.

The foot of the article will show some examples of how the data can be used and has a link to an interactive L&D dashboard built on the SIMMPLE data model.

I have termed the methodology I use as the Standard Industry Model to Measure Payback from Learning Events or ‘SIMMPLE’.

It supports the more familiar models such as Kirkpatrick et al and is the new standard in Learning Evaluation within Corporate L&D environments. This will give you Levels 4 and 5 of Kirkpatricks model with very little effort (and will actually allow you to go way beyond Kirkpatrick and Phillips 5 steps)

SIMMPLE allows organisations of any size to use a standard data framework which allows them to understand employee experience, areas which to be optimised, and directly correlate this to job performance pre and post Learning activity.

The methodology is tool agnostic and can be deployed within any Analytics environment, you could even use excel!

The SIMMPLE methodology has been designed and developed to be simple to implement (deployment is usually less than one week), with near immediate results… the day after you start it, you will get actionable insights.

One differentiator between the SIMMPLE and other methodologies is the incorporation of a learning specific Sentiment Lexicon. The sentiment behind the word’s learners use to describe learning are different to the sentiment of normal conversation. It is easy to build your own sentiment lexicon over time which is specific to your business, or you can contact me for information about the one I built.

The model has a simple schema which puts both learner, and learning event, at the core, it is massively scalable with some deployments having incorporated Personality profiling and social media usage.

One key element to using the scheme is in the standardisation of how you collect feedback from learners. Now I know that the ‘Effectiveness' of learning in corporate environments is often carried out by various ‘tests’, however, you can save time and money by simply asking your learners how confident they feel in the subject post learning. A study of 40,000 Learning events mapping self-stated confidence to performance movement post-learning showed a far stronger correlation than number of questions answered correct in tests).

So, for every learning event, regardless of format, you need to be asking your learners for feedback on the event’ (the first four question assumes no LRS to track course attendance):

·        What is your Employee ID

·        What date did you undertake the training activity?

·        What was the title of the training activity?

·        Date of event

·        ‘Describe your experience in one word’

·        ‘How confident do you feel in the subject 1-10’

·        Why do you hold that level of confidence?

·        What might stop you implementing what you have learned?

From this simple ‘survey’, you will have data to:

·        Understand the proportion of learners with Positive and negative experiences and track this over time.

·        Understand exactly why the experience was positive or negative for the learner, and track this over time

·        Understand how successful the course was from a confidence perspective and track this over time

·        Uncover cultural issues which prevent your learning from being implemented and track these over time

If you ask the same questions, they same way, every time, you only ever need to build it once and you will have the ability to immediately compare course and formats across all your activity, FOREVER.

This is your first data source. The others are as follows (imagine each set as an excel spreadsheet with each field being a column header):

These five data sources (with one optional one) can be provided by different areas within your business on a weekly basis in the form of 5 excel spreadsheets, or you may hook directly into the data across multiple sources using APIs (or xAPI’s as L&D functions like to call them.. to avoid any confusion, every other part of your business will just call them APIs, they aren’t new, in fact L&D is running to catch up on where the rest of your business was years ago #sorrynotsorry)

The important element is that they are joined by the Learner through the employee ID (payroll number/whatever you use to identify people in your business).. This is a view of your LEARNER and their workplace activity, not just the learning event.

The SIMMPLE approach allows for organisations to take a holistic view of learning variables and quickly conduct longitudinal studies as well as ad hoc deep dives as to which learning events work for which employee demographic. From these five sets of data, you can run experiments and very easily demonstrate the business impact of your learning interventions against control groups, these sets can be automated so once joined together in an analytics tool, require no maintainance, you just get a true understanding of everything you deliver with the ability to ask powerful questions of the data, and form hypothesis to test.

By using these standard questions and data schema, you can also easily benchmark against other organisations and share best practice.

Outputs from the model are near endless, however it supports the creation of both interactive dashboards and ad hoc analysis, some examples of which are shown below:

Example of a *self-service, interactive, Tableau Dashboard built on the SIMMPLE data model:

Meta Study of learner experience by age in powerBI:

Study of learner experience and self-stated confidence post-learning by learning format:

Study of self-stated confidence post-learning and learner sales conversion performance 4 weeks post learning event:

So, the secret is out, you can have a kick ass analytics solution telling you everything you need to know about your Learning activity, and proving your value to your C-Suite, today, with no new toolset, just a SIMMPLE methodology!

*if you want to 'play about' with the interactive dashboard, click here, and look for the icon to make it full screen... then, well, just click stuff, oh, and if you like this article, please consider sharing it :)