Measurement of Business Impact

Social Learning, or as we call it, Collaborative Learning, has exploded, unleashing a barrage of opinion masquerading as learning. This presentation, delivered at the ASTD Regional Conference on May 18, 2011, details steps to take to ensure that effective curriculum design, quality learning, and measurement are fundamental parts of your learning programs. The presentation highlights two collaborative learning platforms and their quantifiable impact on business results.

HR and learning professionals have a number of choices with regard to the metrics and measurement tools available on the market. Become a savvy consumer of these products by learning what you need to look for, the right questions to ask vendors, and how to identify what you may be able to accomplish in-house.

In addition to downloading a PDF of the presentation, you can watch the video.

According to a 2010 study by LexisNexis, U.S. workers spend half of their time retrieving and managing information - a patently disquieting figure. The predicator of this drain on resources is often due to one or a combination of seven data quality issues (Redman 2008). The costs of ignoring data quality issues can be staggering. However, the investment in time to ensure that data are consistent will make all the difference in the quality of your assessments.

It is becoming virtually undeniable: social learning is a force in the world of corporate learning. Just as social media is changing the way we interact with companies, our colleagues, friends, and families, social learning is changing the way we work - or at least it should be. While some companies are holding back on exploring this Brave New World, waiting for best practices to evolve, innovative companies are experimenting, blazing trails, and succeeding as a result.

We've all heard the adage, "Don't ask the question if you don't want to hear the answer." Unfortunately, some learning leaders are taking this to heart - not measuring the financial impact of their learning programs because they're afraid the interventions have no impact. Others don't measure because their CEOs aren't asking them to. "Why measure money that's already been spent?" Because measurement impacts the future! Discover how you can use measurement and analysis to change the outdated assumptions your C-suite might have about your learning initiatives.

If you are only looking at the bottom-line results of the impact of learning programs at your organization you may only be scratching the surface. Behind those numbers might lie real opportunity to make significant improvement, the challenge is analyzing the data. The data is often available, but accessing it may not be a task for the faint-hearted. However, by aligning early with those who hold the keys to the data your journey will be far less daunting.

Experience, also known as informal learning, accounts for 70 percent of the knowledge we bring into our careers. The remaining 30 percent is comprised of our training and education - formal learning. The challenge for CLOs is how to integrate the convenience and flexibility of informal learning with the expert-selected content and measurement value of formal learning - targeting our learning investments and taking advantage of the full potential of both.

Learn how to isolate the business impact of your human capital investments and apply analytics and key measurement steps to implement in your organization today! Learn how an array of Fortune 500^® companies have used proven methodologies to measure the impact of learning and development investments to take their intelligent talent strategies to the next level - Optimization.

In addition to downloading a PDF of the presentation below, you can watch the video.

Organizations have a strong need for better skills to make analytic decisions on human capital issues. Learn about the three types of data and analysis that can be conducted to empower HR professionals with the data they need to support their decision making as well as the changes in structure and work design organizations must undergo for these decisions to be effective and sustainable.

With an informal, user-generated approach to developing content for learning, Sun Microsystems has created a delivery platform, the Sun Learning eXchange (SLX), that delivers timelier, quality content with drastically less expense than instructor-led and web-based training. The development costs are so much lower for SLX, the ROI versus web-based training is 7,505 percent. As impressive as that is, perhaps most encouraging about this new delivery platform is the high, and growing rate of user acceptance.