Discover Whether Your Investment in Learning Pays Off

Michael Papay
Vice President
Fort Hill Company

In these challenging economic times, it is more important than ever for learning and development professionals to be able to communicate how much value their programs create. Equally important is to understand where potential value is being lost, and how that value can be captured in future programs.

Introducing the Learning Impact Calculator™

Fort Hill Company has developed a powerful on-line tool—the Learning Impact Calculator™—to help you quickly and easily model the financial impact of learning in your organization and compare the benefits of various process improvements.

In a few minutes you can run multiple scenarios to:

•	Estimate the value generated by your current programs;
•	Plot the breakeven analysis and the unrealized value; and
•	Visualize the impact of improvements in transfer and application.

The Learning Impact Calculator™ is available without charge to Learning Alert subscribers (see access instructions below). We encourage you to share it with colleagues.

How the Learning Impact Calculator™ Works

The calculator takes into account the costs of delivering the training, the value generated by those who effectively apply it, and the number of participants who effectively use what they have learned.

Using this data it calculates the current dollar return (or cost) to the business and generates graphs of the realized and unrealized value.

How to Use the Calculator

1. Go to: http://www.forthillcompany.com/calculator/index.php
2. Enter the cost, value created, and percent of application for one of your programs.
3. Review the results.
4. Run multiple scenarios with different parameters to evaluate the impact and potential for increased value.
5. Identify opportunities for improvement.

What We Have Learned

As we were testing the calculator with different clients and programs, we came to three conclusions:

1. The potential value of well-designed and targeted programs can be significant.
2. Most programs leave a lot of "money on the table"– usually more than half their potential return.
3. You cannot save your way to success. Reducing the cost of the program has far less impact on the ROI than improving the amount of transfer and application.

Ideas Into Action

Use the calculator to stimulate discussion.

Assess the potential return of your key learning programs and identify the greatest opportunities for improvement.

Use the results to stimulate discussions with your colleagues in learning and development and with program sponsors. You have our permission to share the Learning Impact Calculator™ with as many colleagues as you like.

Increase learning transfer and market training's value.

In the current economic climate, it is essential to extract maximum possible value from every investment. Increasing learning transfer is the fastest way to increase the value of learning and development.

Apply the Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning to strengthen your program’s value chain, and then document and market its value to ensure continued investment.

Send us your reactions and ideas.

We would like to make the Learning Impact Calculator™ and LearningAlert even more valuable to you. We welcome your ideas and suggestions and look forward to hearing from you. Write to: ijw.liuaotztxailr@wdgei

We will be at the ASTD International Conference in San Diego, June 1-4, 2008 (Booth 704). Stop by if you would like a guided tour of the Learning Impact Calculator™ or to discuss these topics in greater depth. We look forward to meeting you.

Learning Alert™ is sponsored by:

© Copyright 2008 Fort Hill Company, all rights reserved