SCARED TO MEASURE IMPACT?

What's the problem?  Why do organizations and their training groups  end up with nothing to show for their multi-million dollar investments in training?  Why aren’t business leaders making an aggressive and determined attempt to measure and report the true benefits of their training programs?  The short answer is simple - they lack the expertise and confidence to present their results to their C-levels and stakeholders.  In a recent study, it was estimated that over 95% of organizations feel the real need and urgency to demonstrate the impact and bottom-line value of training, but less than 5% feel confident in their ability to measure and report that very same business impact.  The paradox here is that ROI numbers are so important to the business that most training organizations are too afraid to present them.  They want to get it right so bad, and they are so deathly afraid of getting it wrong, that they end up presenting nothing!  This paralysis and lack of data is quickly interpreted as ineffectiveness and only fuels the already prevalent notion, especially amidst the more skeptical business leaders, that most employees’ training doesn’t “work” and is simply a frivolous waste of time and money. 

Ironically, another reason why HR and training groups are not doling out the impact studies is that they have historically been given somewhat of a “free pass” when it comes to proving their worth and justifying their expenses.  Because they represent, advocate, and spend much of their resources on developing the human side of the business, organizational leaders tend to be cautious about taking them to task and demanding irrefutable evidence that every single one of their initiatives are turning a profit.  No leader wants to advance the notion that investing in people is a “bad” idea.  Giving even the slightest hint or inkling that you don’t want to develop and enrich your employees can surely put you on the fast track to early unpaid retirement.  As most leaders realize, human capital and capital gains are better kept in separate conference rooms.   While this historical treatment has been a blessing on the one hand, it may also have over the years, rendered us just a little bit more relaxed when it comes to proving our value to the business.  And although the burning platform has been ignited, and will be burning a lot faster in the future, the sheer lack of fire for all these years has simply left most training organizations inexperienced at the art and science of defining their worth.  

When you put these two factors together (lack of confidence and no experience), you end up with an inevitable scenario where HR and its internal training groups are just not able to compete for resources as well as most of the other functions throughout the organization.  Organizational leaders and stakeholders must allocate their limited capital and make hard decisions about where they want to invest their money.   It should come as no surprise that they will be focused on what will provide the largest and surest return on their investments.  Obviously, the business groups and functions that can show a great ROI track record and present their budgetary needs with the promise of demonstrable returns will be the ones getting the lion share of resources.