Learning and Analytics: Business Briefing

Transcription

1 Business Briefing SUCCESSFACTORS / Business Briefing : Business Briefing Why learning with analytics bridges the gaps in your workforce s capabilities, improves performance and delivers a quantifiable ROI. 1

2 : Business Briefing Why learning with analytics bridges the gaps in your workforce s capabilities, improves performance and delivers a quantifiable ROI. There are always gaps between your strategic goals and your workforce s capabilities. Training will get you part of the way there but in isolation not far enough to bridge the critical capability gaps. But all too often, training is delivered without the tools to measure its real impact or even deliver the right training. How do you know whether it is effective? How do you know whether it delivers a real ROI for your business? Only when you use business metrics and analytics to support your Learning programs will you start to see the impact across the business. The relationship between learning and analytics is often misunderstood and under utilised. Typically, when people discuss analytics they are talking about reporting within a specific learning management system. They are talking about course completions, scores, pass rates and usage data. Whilst useful, this information doesn t really help you to make the connection with what is happening in your organisation, or whether the training is having the desired effect of boosting productivity, improving service and raising levels of efficiency. Training without the right analytics is like driving without a map. You know what you want the training to achieve, but you have no idea whether you are delivering the right solution or even providing it to the right people. Without analytics, you are at risk of driving your learning strategy blind, and destroying the results you can expect to gain in the process. 2

3 More training isn t necessarily better As e-learning took off in the early 90s, many companies started taking a buckshot approach. Purchasing and delivering e-learning was cheap compared to running face-to-face classrooms. So companies bought entire libraries of content, creating huge curriculums for new employees and assuming that, by the time they finished, they would be ready to do their job. They substituted e-learning courses for classroom instruction, mistakenly assuming they were equally beneficial. But without analytics, they had no way of knowing whether the quality of their employees might actually be dropping. Their mistake was assuming more was better. When in fact, the more targeted and concise your training curriculum the more effective it will be. Analytics shows you what real results you can gain When implementing a modern Learning Management System, business metrics should be used to show what actual value the organisation gains, and not just to use analytics which traditionally measures the amount of training completed. Effective insights should show the link between: 1) Training completed and revenue earned. This may be for revenue generating roles or between organisation units 2) Compliance training and safety performance 3) Training completed and performance ratings 4) Training completed and salary increases. Do individuals who excel in training get higher salary increases? Do those who don t complete the training, or get poor results, get lower salary increases? 5) Training completed and the development and retention of high performers 6) Training completed and development of new career paths to develop the future capability required by companies, rather than the continued building of historical competencies 3

4 Improving learning through workforce analytics is a continuous process For decades, training departments have used methodologies like ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implement, and Evaluation) to clearly define what to teach and what s going to be of most value. ADDIE was extremely effective, but fell out of favor with the arrival of e-learning because of the amount of time it took to do ADDIE properly. What the industry did not recognise was that, with the proper use of learning management and analytics, ADDIE becomes a continuous process, instead of a once per curriculum type event. It s become clear that Learning Management Systems MUST have integrated analytics and metrics, to allow continual evaluation of the training s impact. More importantly, LMS must be integrated into a business full suite of applications, along with workforce analytics, to record exactly what the entire business gains from the investment in training. Use ADDIE to guide the implementation of learning analytics The first step, when developing a training program, is identifying what business problem you are trying to solve. By using analytics, you can then actively measure the key metrics related to the problem, whether working in a manufacturing or an office environment for example, and how they improve. This analysis stage is the A in ADDIE, which helps you determine who and what training needs to be done. The Design and Development phases are up to the training department to define and create. The Implementation phase is typically done within the Learning Management System, when training is deployed to employees identified during the analysis phase. Once the learners have consumed the material, the Evaluation phase begins. The effectiveness of the training is measured by looking at the impact on the problems first identified. As before, the Evaluation phase is performed with an analytics package. Whether you use ADDIE or a different methodology, it is always good practice to know: What are the business problems within your company? Can the problems be solved through training? Once the training has been delivered, was it effective? What was its impact? The best way of answering these questions is through the use of workforce analytics to continually measure your company s performance. 4

5 Feeding data back in will improve the data you pull out Historically, companies collected performance data using business intelligence tools. But training departments rarely used this data to guide their curriculums. Often, you would find learning management systems feeding data in but almost never taking data out to direct future training. But with the addition of true business metrics, and not just standard analytics and reporting, this has begun to change. Workforce Analytics gives you up to the minute information on the impact of training To maximise your organisation s performance, Workforce Analytics needs to be integrated into a full suite of applications with both workforce metrics and analytics capability. This is where the true insights will be gained. For example, using analytics with Learning strategies you can determine: What is the relationship between span of control, learning and revenue? Can departments which complete all of the training have a larger span of control, less overhead costs and greater profitability? What is the relationship between learning completed and the ratio of high performers and revenue? Do departments that have completed the training have a higher ratio of high performers? Does this result in higher revenue and revenue growth? Do these departments have lower levels of poor and marginal performers? What is the relationship between the types of training and their business impact? Does sales and product training correlate with higher revenue, higher ratio of higher margin sales? Does program content training within a government department correlate with higher levels of program outcomes within the community, such as placements within a children s community department? What is the relationship between training completed and career paths? Do departments that have completed all the relevant training have a higher ratio of internal promotions to external recruits? If so, do we than reward managers who develop their staff more? Do we reward managers who export talent more than those who import talent? These are just a few examples of how everyone, from line managers to executives, can get up to the minute information on the impact training is having across the enterprise, and not just a status report on how much training was delivered. 5

6 You can identify problems and how to solve them Workforce Analytics also gives you insights into what problems are occurring within the business, and how you can solve them through training. In addition, it gives you a transparent way of calculating the ROI across the entire company, instead of just within your training department. Traditionally, training departments have been measured by how cheaply and effectively they can deliver training. However, with the use of analytics against company metrics, you can now measure the impact of training in terms of how much money you save the company per training pound. For example, if you identify a 500,000/year problem that can be addressed through 50,000 worth of training, you can easily justify the budget through the results you can achieve. 6

7 Conclusion Analytics equips you to execute your strategy more efficiently and profitably Workforce analytics and learning are two significant pieces of the entire HR and Business Execution suite. Combined, they can provide a tremendous amount of insight for your training department, as well as provide a powerful business performance measuring tool. In today s economy, this type of insight allows you to be more effective with your budget, and to increase the impact of training across the entire business. The integration of workforce analytics and learning will generate insights which in turn create a real and sustainable competitive advantage while demonstrating the value to the business. Six Steps to Success: 1) Deliver fact/data based business cases for what training you are doing and why. 2) Demonstrate why investing in training program X, will help the company execute on its strategy and deliver ROI through authoritative insight. 3) Engage the business leaders, HR, finance, sales and operations with business metrics to really show what impact training is having and what needs to be measured. 4) Embrace workforce analytics as an integrated part of decision making and combine multiple data sources from finance, sales, HR and training, to allow you to measure the relationship and impact training has on the strategy, alignment, people performance and productivity of your organisation, thereby linking your training strategy to the business. 5) Embark on a transformation journey - a phased development with each phase representing a more mature use of workforce analytics and a more specific strategic business impact. Move from reporting (understanding what s happening today) to analytics (why it s happening), to planning (how do we take action today to ensure we have the right workforce trained for tomorrow). 6) Proactively engage with HR and the business to uncover potential problem areas and ensure that they can quantify the impact of interventions. Ultimately, you ll be able to identify the gaps in your workforce s capabilities, and to bridge them with the right training. Performance will improve across the business as a result, and you will be better equipped to execute your strategy more efficiently and profitably. The financial business case is real and significant. When you can fine tune how you manage your most strategic asset - human capital it leads to results. 7

8 Clients we work with: Swiss Re: We need to prepare ourselves to do the job of tomorrow, not just be there to fill gaps. We need to be a strategic partner of the business to really be successful in the future. Franziska Stadelmann, Head of Global Learning Service Thomson Reuters: Our top imperatives include aligning learning with talent and learning with performance... We need to make sure that we are supporting people from the time that they join the company, throughout their employment, to the time that they leave the company. - Charles Jennings, Global Head of Learning at Thomson Reuters Biographies: Ed Cohen: VP Learning Technology Ed Cohen joined SuccessFactors in 2011 as part of the acquisition of Plateau Systems where he was the CTO for over 15 years. Previously in his career he founded Sensory Computing, which produced hundreds of instructional titles, a pioneering LCMS and other technologies related to delivering and testing in e-learning. Ed currently serves as Chairman of the Aviation Industry CBT Committee s (AICC) and participates with other e-learning organisations such as LETSI and ADL/SCORM. Ed is a regular speaker at international e-learning seminars and a frequent contributor to major e-learning and HR publications. Peter Howes: Vice President, Analytics and Planning With 40+ years experience in human resource management, founder and former CEO of Inform, Peter Howes has a distinguished global reputation as a consultant in Workforce Metrics, Analytics and Workforce Planning. Peter has extensive experience in developing HR information and measurement systems and processes, and has been involved in more than 100 Workforce Planning consulting assignments. Peter is a widely respected and regular speaker at conferences and workshops around the world. 8

9 Business Briefing SuccessFactors UK Limited 1 Cavendish Place, 1st Floor London W1G 0QF United Kingdom T: +44 (0) SuccessFactors and the SuccessFactors logo are trademarks of SuccessFactors, Inc SuccessFactors, Inc. All rights reserved.