As workplace learning and performance professionals, you’re under increasing pressure to demonstrate and communicate the value of learning to your organisations. By using a combination of logic, internal data and external data, you can accomplish that worthwhile objective. Drawing from the various sources of evidence described below, you’ll find that making the case for learning and performance improvement activities to your decision makers isn’t as hard as you thought.

Recognising learning as the primary vehicle for building human capital is the logical argument for the value of learning. In the new economy, work is primarily intellectual and human capital is a competitive advantage for both organisations and nations. Human capital represents the knowledge and skills of the workforce. Learning is the vehicle through which the knowledge and skills are developed and maintained. Organisations and nations that can provide the right learning opportunities for their people will be the most successful in terms of productivity, growth and innovation.

While development of a knowledgeable and skilled workforce is critical, it’s not enough for workplace learning and performance (WLP) professionals to merely improve and sustain the performance of employees. Other factors such as incentives, work processes and talent management can facilitate or hinder the application of knowledge and skills. Thus, organisational leaders who address simultaneously all of the variables that contribute to performance maximise the value of learning and take advantage of growth in human capital.

WLP professionals can use two types of internal organisational data to support the case for investment in learning and performance. One kind of data is impact or return on investment studies of learning and performance improvement initiatives that have already occurred. The other type is qualitative evidence gleaned from the alignment of learning needs and activities with critical business objectives through logical analysis and causal chains.

Pointing to past learning and performance improvement initiatives that made either a significant contribution to the success of a business venture or a positive change in some critical business indicator can be a cornerstone of the case for learning. However, most organisations don’t have the capacity to evaluate all individual learning initiatives at that level. You can justify current and future learning investments and initiatives by qualitatively linking competency gaps or work process deficiencies with current and future business strategies and goals. Start by describing a key business goal, and map it to current workforce capability. Next, you should identify gaps that learning and other performance improvement solutions can fill. If the business objective is met, you’ll find it’s easier to argue that any learning and performance improvement interventions tied to that objective played a role in its achievement.

If you want to structure your organisation’s learning investments and practices so that they mirror those of high-performing organisations, look to benchmarking for help. When you appeal to data from other organisations through benchmarking activities, you strengthen your claim that investment in learning and other performance improvement practices will ultimately pay off.

By benchmarking against other organisations, you obtain data that supports the levels of investment and the types of practices that you want to recommend to your organisation’s decision makers. That’s particularly true if you’re benchmarking against high-performing organisations that enjoy effective and efficient learning operations. By comparing the expenditures, structures and processes for development and deployment of learning assets in your organisation to those of the benchmark organisations, not only do you get a clear sense of what your goals should be, but also you see the possibilities of what might be.

In addition, case studies of learning and performance improvement initiatives in other organisations that include impact and ROI data justify the use of similar approaches by your organisation. For some executives, the mere fact that large numbers of initiatives across many organisations have generated significant ROI may be evidence enough to prove the value of learning. For 31 case studies included in three volumes of ASTD’s In Action Series: Measuring Return on Investment, edited by Jack and Patricia Phillips, the ROI on learning and performance improvement initiatives ranged from 3 to 2,981 per cent, with an average of 733 per cent.

In addition to data from benchmarking and case study evaluations, you can cite research studies that show a positive relationship between investment in learning and organisational performance, particularly profitability and employee retention. Most studies that link employee development and organisational performance include learning as part of a larger set of human resources practices. That makes it difficult to disentangle the unique contribution of learning.

Studies that focus on learning variables generally find a positive correlation with organisational outcomes. For example, a study by ASTD, ‘Profiting from learning: do firms’ investments in education and training pay off?’ found that training expenditure per employee in 1996, 1997 and 1998 predicted company stock price the following year.

Making the business case for investment in learning has become easier with the growing acknowledgement of human capital as the key to economic and organisational success. WLP professionals should learn to use the multiple sources identified here – impact and ROI data, qualitative analysis that ties learning to business needs, benchmarking data, and research on learning and performance – to justify learning decisions and proposals within their organisations. There’s no doubt that the WLP industry needs more sophisticated research to identify patterns of investment and practices that maximise the value of learning in particular contexts. But until those studies are published, rely on the suggested sources of evidence and arguments to communicate the value of learning to your organisation.

ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) is the world's largest association dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals. Copyright © 2004 from T+D magazine by Brenda Sugrue. Adapted and reprinted with permission of the American Society for Training & Development.

Brenda Sugrue is senior director of research at the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD). To find out more about the work of ASTD visit www.astd.org
ASTD will provide another letter from across ‘the Pond’ in the June issue of Training Journal.

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