Return on Expectations for Learning & Development

December is for many companies the month of making new ideas for the next year, budgeting and trying to convince stakeholders to get the necessary money to roll out these plans. Learning & Development is no different from any other department in the organization and needs to define (ever smaller) budgets.
While defending those budgets we often get the question "What will be the Return on Investment" of all these plans ? Calculating the Return on Investment of Training is a very difficult exercise and perhaps even impossible. Especially if you are talking about leaderships development, communication skills, ... what will be the ROI of those kind of trainings ? Do we only take into account the direct impact of the training or also the indirect (retention, motivation,

An example
e.g. your organization rolls out a leadership training. You develop the competences of you managers during a one year time span with a mix of classroom trainings, coachings, workshops, ... Perhaps you've even sent them to a development center before and after the training activity. And now is the time to calculate the ROI of the program. You can measure if any of the managers left the company, (at that moment you need to know why he left the company), does his team deliver better results due (to what extent is this a result of the training ? ), ... you see, it'll be very hard to calculate the result of the training.
The same goes for safety trainings. People well know and understand the procedure. They know how to react in case of fire, but I hope they won't need this knowledge. When will you be able to calculate the ROI of this training ?

The 2 option strategy :

Organizations have two options : they invest in their staff through 

learning & development or they don't. 

If they invest in learning & development (and they should, since this is an important motivator), they'd better prepare the training very well and be in line with the EXPECTATIONS of the business.

Defining Return on Expectations
A few months ago I wrote an article on the New World Kirkpatrick Model.

I do believe learning & development should sometimes invest more time on the preparation of a training. Asking stakeholders (CEO, managers, employees, ...) the following questions :

• What should be the result of the training?  
• What is going wrong today and how do they want it in the future ? 
• What is the behavior today and how should it be ? 

This requires from learning & development to get connected with the business and align learning plans with business needs. Based on this input, they can define the solution (wheather it is a classroom training, seminar, workshop, reading a book, peer coaching, e-learning, ...)

Not only before the training, but perhaps even more important, after the training they should re-check if they meet up to the expectations of the business and continue supporting business untill expecations are met. You can easily apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach by Deming untill business has the right output to further develop the organization. 

Conclusion 

Leave your nice and warm office. Get connected with the business. Ask them what their EXPECTATIONS, what they need to achieve their goals and define your trainings, based on these needs. If you do, you will automatically deliver qualitative learning plans and results that support the business.