CAN YOU ACTUALLY MEASURE ROI ON TRAINING?
It’s the debate that goes back decades and has fuelled thousands of training industry blog posts: can you really measure the ROI on training?
Not in terms of productivity. Not in terms of participant satisfaction. In terms of the most important thing of all: revenue.
The answer is theoretically simple: yes, of course you can. But the reality of getting that measurement is significantly more complex – and might be missing the point entirely.
HOW TO MEASURE THE ROI ON TRAINING
When a recruiter wins a big deal, training is just one potential factor.
The reality is that any deal is the product of thousands of little variables, from the reputation of your business to the economy, the market, and the mood your client contact was in that day.
So, to measure the ROI on your training, you just need to set up a control scenario where all those elements stay exactly the same and training is the only thing that has changed. Compare the performance of the trained recruiters to the control group and you’ll get a precise, measurable ROI.
It makes perfect theoretical sense. But let’s get back to reality.
In the real world, with all the things that influence a deal – many of which we’ll never even know about – ROI is, at best, an estimate. All we can do is get close to understanding how online learning led to better performance and more revenue.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t assess whether your training is worth the investment.
ESTIMATING ROI TAKES A HUGE AMOUNT OF DATA
At Juice, our approach is to make as much information as possible available to you. We provide monthly reports which include engagement and results from your team, so you can easily see their progress and performance.
But we also make it easy to see each recruiter as an individual, looking into how much they’ve engaged with the platform, which courses they’ve been working on, and the areas they could improve.
All this information is designed to help you steer every recruiter through relevant, impactful training – and spot the changes in behaviour and performance that come as a result. It’s not a simple sum for ROI, but a holistic view so you can help every individual succeed.
WHY ROE IS MORE USEFUL THAN ROI
As far back as the 1950s, Dr. Donald Kirkpatrick was developing his Kirkpatrick Model: a structured way to analyse and evaluate training.
This model covers four key levels of appraisal:
- How people react to the training
- How much people understand the training
- Whether they use new behaviours
- Whether those behaviours positively impact the business
More recently, this model was updated to include one all-encompassing metric: the Return on Expectations.
Return on Expectations, or ROE, is a counterpart to ROI that’s based on what the training was designed to do. That could be generate revenue – but it’s just as likely to be improving wellbeing, increasing efficiency, or retaining great people.
At Juice, that’s what we’re all about: creating the right kind of return for every business, and every individual recruiter. Whatever that return looks like to you – financial or otherwise – Juice is designed to become a long-term source of fresh ideas, interesting content, and new ways of doing things.
Because that’s what real ROI looks like: months and years of small improvements, incrementally helping your business grow, adapt and, yes, earn more revenue.
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