Issue 33 - January 2010

Happy New Year from abdi
We would like to wish you a very happy and successful new year. The new budgets are in so let's make the most out of them. abdi can provide the tools and best practice you and your organisation needs to make that budget stretch a lot further to get the best ROI. To discover how abdi can help you and your organisation, visit our website at www.abdi.eu.com

• The Importance of Planning
  
• Broadcasting Workshop
  
• Meeting the team
• abdi in Egypt
• Build a Library: Jim Collins' 'Good to Great'
  
• Certificates awarded
  

More often than not, our first contact by organisations is usually because they wish to learn to measure and report the business impact and value (ROI) of their people investments, our objective is to build practices and processes within our client base that enable them to plan investments more effectively. Better planning will deliver greater value and the function of measurement and reporting then becomes a validation of better decision making, generating data in order both to leverage value from existing investments and improving investment decision making in future. 

A question we're often asked by chief executives and senior managers is how much should I invest? I'm afraid there is no simple answer to how much! We take the view that organisations will only understand optimal investment levels if they have good data which will provide them with evidence drawn from their own investments in order to establish the optimal level for specific departments, regions and job holders.

We've tried to encourage client organisations and relevant stakeholders (e.g. funding and commissioning agencies) to work together and using our data frameworks, analyse aggregated data so that optimal levels can be built up from evidence across sectors (work for example we are currently encouraging in our work within the NHS).

At a more general level, human capital investment data is generally very poor. However, one source worth looking at is the annual ASTD State of the Industry Report. This excellent annual report draws on data from mainly but not exclusively US companies. It provides a general set of benchmarks based on the L&D investment practice of these organisations including data on average $ amount per employee, investment as % of payroll and organisation revenue. These should not be assumed to be directly relevant to any particular organisation but do provide some general benchmarks that you might want to be aware of and compare to your own.

More importantly, when we're working with our clients to embed the ROI Methodology, we usually agree at an early stage the reporting data which should go to senior management and the Board of Directors and included in this are not only business impact and value data but also some specific ratios such as those used in the ASTD report. This data over a period of time can be correlated with business impact and value data. This approach helps organisations build up an evidence based set of data which can be used to answer the question - what is the optimal investment level for my organisation?

Why not make it your New Year resolution to begin the process of building this investment planning approach for your organisation? Come and talk to us at abdi so we can help you learn to answer the question - what should I invest in and how much will deliver optimal results for my organisation?

Jane Massy

Don't miss out on your chance to attend our ROI Foundation Certificate course tailored for the broadcasting sector.

28-29th January, we have limited places available - book now at www.abdi.eu.com to avoid disappointment.

Hosted by Skillset this strictly un-miss-able unique opportunity to learn those valuable processes to improve your annual BTSR Survey results.


Meeting the team

Don't forget if you would like to arrange a meeting with any of our sales team to discuss the opportunity of running an in house course with abdi contact info@abdi.eu.com leave your details and we will get back to you to arrange when and where, we look forward to working with you.


abdi in Egypt

Our team have just returned from a very successful trip to Egypt. Jane Massy held an ROI seminar to over 60 top CEO's in Egypt, spreading the word of the importance of planning, measuring and evaluating all human investment using the ROI Methodology. Not only that we also held a series of ROI Foundation Certificate workshops for over 80 top HR and L&D professionals, the project was a huge success and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all who attended and the International Training Council in Egypt for hosting the event.


Build a Library: Jim Collins' 'Good to Great'

Jim Collins' 'Good to Great' follows his earlier work 'Built to Last' and has an additional monograph called 'Good to Great and the Social Sectors' which extends its research and principles into the third sector.

In asking the question, what makes an organisation great (outstanding results, excellence in the way it runs its operations, a leading beacon of its sector and long lasting through periods of industrial and economic change), Collins proposes that organisations that deliver these results also share some fundamental characteristics.

As you would expect, he proposes that these characteristics can be developed and implemented by others in order to become great. The conclusions he and his team draw are derived from research they undertook into a number of large organisations that all adopted a set of concepts and practices which are the basis of each chapter in the book.

These practices include Level 5 Leadership (the highest level of leadership practices), getting the people right, confronting the brutal facts, a culture of discipline combined with a passion for achievement and judiciously deployed technology as a means of igniting transformation.

For those that don't know his work, I strongly urge you to read it. There are no fads or 'new' ideas but rather some straightforward advice about solid business planning, disciplined execution and focus on high quality data on which to base achievement and continuous improvement. His key message is that a great organisation is built on getting the right people into the right roles doing their job excellently.

Like us, he recommends discipline and rigor not ruthlessness and passing fads. He urges as we do, that you face the brutal facts: look at the data and don't discard it because it isn't telling you or your senior management team what they want to hear!

He points out as we do all the time, no one can run a great organisation without understanding their economic engine. Even not for profit and third sector organisations need to know their organisation's key business metrics.

I have found over the years that those familiar with the work of Collins feel absolutely at home with the ROI Methodology and are able to fit our recommended practice and process changes for planning measuring and reporting their human capital investments seamlessly into their functional and operational practices.


Certificates awarded

abdi are pleased to announce that the following candidates have all passed the ROI Foundation Certificate Course and will all receive their Edexcel certificates.

Julie Pardy - Regulatory Liaison Manager, Worksmart Solutions
Kim Jones - Training and Development Manager, Scarborough Hospital
Kathy Westgate - E-learning lead, NHS
Pamela J Wood - Apprenticeship Co-ordinator, Huddersfield Royal Infirmary


ROI is a key tool for managing L&D and HR objectives and budgets

Make yourself one of the smart practitioners who can bring Gold Standard impact planning and evaluation to your organisation - reserve your place on one of our 2010 courses now

ROI Foundation Certificate for the Broadcasting Sector
28-29 January

ROI Foundation Certificate courses
8-9 March
21-22 June
20-21 September
15-16 November

ROI Evaluator Certificate courses
7-9 June
17-19 November

To talk about bringing our course in-house to you and your colleagues, or would like to host a course for your sector, distribution network or key stakeholders, for further information on any of abdi ltd's courses and to book your place call (01223) 360240 or email us at info@abdi.eu.com


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