Issue 26 - June 2009

Greetings from abdi
abdi ltd has a depth of experience unique in the UK in impact measurement and ROI studies to assess investment in human capital. abdi ltd undertakes external evaluations and trains key individuals in private and public sector organisations to measure return on investment in HR interventions of all sorts including learning and development, change programmes and international assignments. Check out our website www.abdi.eu.com




Asking the ROI questions

My eye was caught by the message from a session at the CIPD's spring conference: you don't have to react to the pressure of the recession by slashing your learning and development - you can slash budgets and take the opportunity to improve the way you do things.

Two global companies told of cutting costs by halting external training and any training that wasn't core to supplying customer service.  Both had refocused so as to make the best of internal capacity to design and deliver required learning.  One was using self-managed learning, having concluded that individuals were best placed to define their own learning needs.

Had I been there I would have put two questions to the room, first: 'Yes but what about the company's needs - who was defining those?'

And my answer?

Well, if I were chief learning officer at either company I'd have ensured I could show how my budget was delivering to the company's key objectives. I'd have had chapter and verse to show where results had been driven by people doing the right things on the job as a result of learning in which they were fully engaged. 

My second question - partly rhetorical - would have been: 'Should any company find itself needing an economic hurricane to show how its learning plans and budgets should be re-aligned?'

Answer? Certainly not.

If I were spending serious money on training in an organisation with no objective means of being sure that it was aligned with need, I'd be a nervous wreck.

Two final questions.

If you were a CEO, would you go anywhere, let alone into a recession, without having a means of tracking your costs, your earnings and your margins?  

Then why, as a chief learning officer, would you neglect to be as well informed?

Jane Massy


Interview with Sue Foster, Group head of Learning and Development, Royal bank of Scotland (RBS)

Sue Foster is responsible for driving the learning agenda across the group for  around 170,000 employees in 53 countries. RBS is currently embedding the ROI Methodology in the planning, improvement and tracking of its learning and development.

'At Group level, we focus on having the right strategy in place,' she says. 'My interest is at the business and organisational level and whether an approach will drive more value. My background is in organisational change and where I find you can really apply the ROI model is where you can articulate the change you want to see in terms of individual and business performance."
 
'I moved into this role 18 months ago. There has always been a great debate about whether you can measure the value of learning. The business invests a great deal in learning and assumes we will get the right results or return on the investment. We have always been able to gather baseline data about volumes etc, but not much on quality and impact.

'When I found out about the ROI methodology it instantly caught my attention. I've heard many professionals say they have given up trying to track the impact of learning because you just can't do it. But the thing I like about the ROI model is the way it looks at application and impact, capturing improvement at both an individual and project/programme level which can drive organisational improvement.

'You have to be really clear on why you're investing in learning - is it about personal development or driving improvement in individual and business performance?. In the past line managers have seen it more as personal development for the individual rather than driving performance. Line managers have seen development opportunities, but haven't asked, If I put this person through this course, what changes should I see in their performance?'

Banking, she points out, invests heavily and increasingly in compliance and mandatory training, and for her the vital link is ensuring that you use this to drive value for the customer, employee and the shareholder.

'People have tended to keep the two separate', she points out, 'But we need customers to benefit from better service  through the investment in mandatory training, and also for the business to get a return' and says, ROI can play a significant role.

Sue Foster is enthusiastic about embedding the ROI Methodology, and describes it as being 'like an enabling technology'.

It has to be embedded into our core learning approach and processes without, as she puts it, 'making it into an over-engineered bureaucracy'.

Now some six months into embedding ROI into the RBS learning and development operation, she reports real enthusiasm: 'The abdi capability workshops went down really well with our learning professionals who could see how their business colleagues would value the approach. It's logical and easy to get your head round so people really like it. One of our divisional heads went along to introduce the workshop and became so involved they spent the whole day there as it really captured their interest.

'Now we've launched it internally across the business learning teams, we've got an increased level of visibility, and will be making this our single approach to measurement. We're also briefing our suppliers this week so they can implement the approach for all our programmes'


abdi/FSSC partnership news - abdi scholarships for financial services SMEs - apply by 10 July

The financial services sector isn't just the big banks and insurance companies. There are thousands of small firms whose learning and development investment is crucial to their profitability, and to the quality they offer to their clients. As a contribution to our partnership with the Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC), we are offering two £750 scholarships - one for each of our autumn abdi ROI Foundation courses on 21 and 22 September and 16 and 17 November - to candidates from financial services small firms. That means firms employing between 1 and 250 staff.

If you'd like to apply for one of the scholarships you'll need to send us at least 200 words telling us why you want to build your knowledge and skills in measuring  L&D up to ROI, and how you intend using them in your business. You'll need to add your name, role, job title, employer and HQ location, and the total number of employees in the business.

If you'd like more information look on our website www.abdi.eu,com or contact Diane Arnott, Course Administrator at diane@abdi.eu.com

Only applications received on or before 10 July 2009 will be considered.


Data dangers

If you've already been on an abdi ROI course you'll know that we give a good deal of attention to data analysis. One of our core messages is that most evaluators spend far too much time collecting data, and far too little analysing it. That's partly because too little planning tends to go into the whole evaluation process, so data has to be retrieved after the event. It's partly because too little importance is given to understanding the data, and to identifying and allowing for the variety of influences that may have contributed to changing it.

Now Steven Levitt, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, has created an MBA course on data analysis with fellow economist John List.
 
The two professors suggest that data is gathered in firms either accidentally or deliberately. They favour the deliberate and planned approach but also characterise accidental data collection as often valuable and cheap.

It sounds like a stimulating and valuable course, but that part of the message seems dangerous. The fact is that planned data collection is pretty much always cheaper because it can be achieved through routine reporting, and because it comes in a predictable fashion can be used more effectively. Unplanned data collection costs more because it involves researching it from scratch and establishing its validity and credibility as a measure that the organisation thinks is important.


Congratulations to 10 more abdi ROI Foundation Award graduates

Joanne Hill - NFU Mutual
Gareth Hanson - Leeds Training Hospital
Julie Colquhoun - York NHS Foundation Trust
Wendy Kelvin - Leeds Primary Care Trust
Liz Butterfield - Kirklees Primary Care Trust
Steven Picker - Volkswagen Group
Lara Cook - Volkswagen Group
Fiona Baldwin - Volkswagen Group
Mark Cox - Volkswagen Group
Andrew Lawlor - Volkswagen Group

If you've already completed the Foundation Course and want to go to Evaluator level, you might still be able to secure a place on our next 3 day abdi ROI Evaluator Course on 17-19 June.
Book direct on www.abdi.eu.com or call us on 01223 360 240.


Building a library 7 - Human Resource Management - Linking Strategy to Practice, Greg L.Stewart and Kenneth G. Brown, Wiley, 2009-05-27

This must be the definitive HR textbook - a doorstopper of 600 pages including 50 pages of appendices, dozens of case studies, glossaries and student exercises.

Put together very much for students, but that shouldn't discourage the business reader for a moment.  The four sections - Seeing people as a Strategic Resource, Securing Effective Employees, Improving Employee Performance and Motivating and Managing Employees - comprehensively cover the HR field, where, of course, ROI is a key tool.

It's attractively and well set out with short, sharp case studies distributed throughout. For the HR professional this is good reference book. For the L&D professional or the evaluator this is an invaluable source of knowledge about what HR specialists should do, and an insight from their perspective on how organisations work, and how one of the key groups of stakeholders in organisational learning and development frames objectives and judges value.

A section which all L&D managers should read leads off with a sharp section on whether good HR practice can be shown to improve productivity and goes on to discuss the differences between cost strategies and differentiation strategies.  This goes right to the heart of L&D planning and design: the cost strategies focusing on group contributions, process improvement, efficiency, clearly prescribed tasks and rules and procedures; the differentiation strategies emphasising the individual, on outcomes and results, innovation, flexible tasks, and relatively few rules and procedures.

Great background stuff for developing sharp indicators and metrics.


Last chance to secure the remaining places for the June abdi ROI course week .......

There are a couple of places only left on the Foundation and Evaluator Courses in the week of 15 - 19 June. To secure one, or for any other enquiries about our services, go to www.abdi.eu.com or call 01223 360 240


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