Training Metrics That Matter For Business Alignment

📈 Unlocking the True Impact of L&D: Beyond Engagement Metrics 🚀 I am honored to once again be asked by the LinkedIn Talent Blog to weigh in on this important question. To truly measure the impact of learning and development (L&D), we need to go beyond traditional engagement metrics and look at tangible business outcomes. 🌟 Internal Mobility: Track how many employees advance to new roles or get promoted after participating in L&D programs. This shows that our initiatives are effectively preparing talent for future leadership. 📚 Upskilling in Action: Evaluate performance reviews, project outcomes, and the speed at which employees integrate their new knowledge into their work. Practical application is a strong indicator of training’s effectiveness. 🔄 Retention Rates: Compare retention between employees who engage in L&D and those who don’t. A higher retention rate among L&D participants suggests our programs are enhancing job satisfaction and loyalty. 💼 Business Performance: Link L&D to specific business performance indicators like sales growth, customer satisfaction, and innovation rates. Demonstrating a connection between employee development and these outcomes shows the direct value L&D brings to the organization. By focusing on these metrics, we can provide a comprehensive view of how L&D drives business success beyond just engagement. 🌟 🔗 Link to the blog along with insights from other incredible L&D thought leaders (list of thought leaders below): https://lnkd.in/efne_USa What other innovative ways have you found effective in measuring the impact of L&D in your organization? Share your thoughts below! 👇 Laura Hilgers Naphtali Bryant, M.A. Lori Niles-Hofmann Terri Horton, EdD, MBA, MA, SHRM-CP, PHR Christopher Lind

Every enablement team has the same problem: - Reps say they want more training. - You give them a beautiful deck. - They ghost it like someone who matched with Keith on Tinder. These folks don't have a content problem as much as they have a consumption problem. Think of it thusly: if no one’s using the enablement you built, it might as well not exist. Here’s the really scary part: The average org spends $2,000 - $5,000 per rep per year on enablement tools, programs, and L&D support. But fewer than 40% (!!!) of reps consistently complete assigned content OR apply it in live deals. So what happens? - You build more content. - You launch new certifications. - You roll out another LMS. And your top reps ignore it all because they’re already performing, while your bottom reps binge it and still miss quota. 🕺 We partner with some of the best enablement leaders in the game here at Sales Assembly. Here’s how they measure what matters: 1. Time-to-application > Time-to-completion. Completion tells you who checked a box. Application tells you who changed behavior. Track: - Time from training to first recorded usage in a live deal. - % of reps applying new language in Gong clips. - Manager feedback within 2 weeks of rollout. If you can’t prove behavior shift, you didn’t ship enablement. You shipped content. 2. Manager reinforcement rate. Enablement that doesn’t get reinforced dies fast. Track: - % of managers who coach on new concepts within 2 weeks. - # of coaching conversations referencing new frameworks. - Alignment between manager deal inspection and enablement themes. If managers aren’t echoing it, reps won’t remember it. Simple as that. 3. Consumption by role, segment, and performance tier. Your top reps may skip live sessions. Fine. But are your mid-performers leaning in? Slice the data: - By tenure: Is ramp content actually shortening ramp time? - By segment: Are enterprise reps consuming the right frameworks? - By performance: Who’s overconsuming vs. underperforming? Enablement is an efficiency engine...IF you track who’s using the gas. 4. Business impact > Feedback scores. “Helpful” isn’t the goal. “Impactful” is. Track: - Pre/post win rates by topic. - Objection handling improvement over time. - Change in average deal velocity post-rollout. Enablement should move pipeline...not just hearts. 🥹 tl;dr = if you’re not measuring consumption, you’re not doing enablement. You’re just producing marketing collateral for your own team. The best programs aren’t bigger. They’re measured, inspected, and aligned to revenue behavior.

Demonstrating the value of learning is easier than you think! In a recent workshop with The Institute for Transfer Effectiveness, I demonstrated how! One workshop participant was designing safety training to help employees use Microsoft 365 strategically to prevent data breaches. She was struggling to capture the value of the program for organizational leaders to understand. I used an alignment framework that incorporates Rob Brinkerhoff’s 6 L&D value propositions and mapped out how to connect her learning program with metrics that matter to organizational leaders. Here’s what that looked like! Aligning learning activities, initiatives or programs to strategic business outcomes is like looking for the through line between disparate things: learning, human performance, departmental key performance indicators, and organizational metrics. This can feel nearly impossible. The glue that holds these seemingly disparate things together are Brinkerhoff’s 6 L&D value propositions. In the safety training example we started by identifying the most relevant value proposition for the program. In this case, it was Regulatory Requirements: a learning program designed to ensure employees are complying with industry specific rules and regulations. Then we connect the L&D value proposition (Regulatory Requirements) with the most relevant outcome for the organization. In this case, it was Net Profit. If employees are complying with industry-specific rules and regulations, this consistent practice will save the organization money in fines, lawsuits, or dealing with the unpleasant consequences of safety challenges (like a data breach). Then we must do the hard work unpacking what people will be doing to support the targeted departmental KPIs. If you’re struggling to figure out the KPIs, you’ll likely find them by asking department leaders what problem they are experiencing on a regular basis that they would like solved. In this case it was too many data breaches and too many outdated files on the server causing misinformation and inconsistent practices. I discovered that what people could be doing differently to support the desired KPIs was adhering to updated protocols on how to manage data and documents within the 365 suite. If people followed the protocols with 100% fidelity, departments would experience a reduction in data breaches. Now … we have the behaviors to target in our training program and the data to use to show the value of learning: Learning metrics: Training attendance and completion rates. Capability metrics: Percentage of fidelity to data and document protocols before and after training. KPI metrics: # of documents on the server that are outdated (being at 20% of lower), # of data breaches per department being at 1 or less annually. Organizational metric: Net Profit How will you use the 6 L&D value propositions and alignment framework to tell your learning value story? #learninganddevelopment #trainingstrategy #datastrategy

Enablement is NOT Checklists Let’s be honest: Too many enablement teams get stuck checking boxes (training delivered, content uploaded, certifications completed). But enablement’s real value isn’t in check the box exercises. Rather, it’s accelerating your company’s North Star. If your org’s 2025 goal is to “increase enterprise deal size by 30%” or “reduce churn by 15%” enablement must be the engine that turns that vision into seller behaviors and customer outcomes. Here’s how: Step 1: Align to the North Star What’s the ONE business outcome your leadership cares about most right now? - Revenue expansion? - Market share in a new vertical? - Customer lifetime value? Enablement’s role: Translate that goal into specific seller competencies. Example: If the North Star is “50% revenue from cross-sell,” enablement must equip reps to: - Identify cross-sell triggers in discovery. - Overcome “buyer indecision” objections (think The JOLT Effect Matt Dixon Ted McKenna) - Co-build ROI cases with champions. Step 2: Define Enablement KPIs That MATTER Forget “hours of training delivered.” Tie enablement success to business KPIs your CRO & other leaders care about: - % of reps exceeding quota (enablement’s job: skill gaps closed). - Deal velocity in priority segments (enablement’s job: applying credible & actionable playbooks for stickiness). - Customer retention rate (enablement’s job: equipping CSMs to spot risk signals) Step 3: Correlate impact beyond “Butts in Seats” Enablement leaders often struggle to prove ROI. Shift the conversation with data that links learning to outcomes: - Pipeline Impact: How did negotiation training affect average deal size? - Behavior Change: How often are reps using the new discovery framework and where is it driving velocity? - Customer Outcomes: How did the onboarding adjustments reduce time-to-value? The Bottom Line: Enablement Is a Strategic Lever, Not a Cost Center When you anchor to the North Star, enablement becomes the bridge between leadership’s vision and frontline execution. Your Move: This week: Ask your CRO/CEO:  - If you could only track one metric, what would it be? Or, What’s the number that, if it trends wrong, will haunt your next earnings call? - Why it works: Links metrics to real-world consequences (investor pressure). This quarter: Build an enablement KPI dashboard that mirrors it. Partner with your Rev Ops or Business Ops team to help you! #oneteam #SalesEnablement #RevenueOperations #Leadership

“L&D Doesn’t Drive Business Results.”  That’s what an executive said to an HR leader I worked with recently. They were hesitant to invest in skill development with us because they couldn’t see how it connected to the bottom line. Honestly, I get it. If you’re measuring things like attendance, course completion, or even satisfaction, it’s hard to make the case for any learning investment. But that’s the problem—those aren’t the metrics that matter. When this company partnered with Growthspace, we helped them shift their focus to the things that really count: Business outcomes: do key business metrics (in their case, customer satisfaction scores) move because of what we do? Manager feedback: do managers see real change in their employee skills? Time-to-impact: How quickly are employees applying what they’ve learned? Once we started measuring these, the results were clear: -Customer satisfaction scores went up -Managers were happy about the progress and became advocates of the program -It happened within a quarter And that skeptical executive? They went from asking, “Why bother?” to “How soon can we scale this?” The takeaway? L&D absolutely drives business results—when you focus on the right outcomes. So, what are you measuring?

Did you know that 92% of learning leaders struggle to demonstrate the business impact of their training programs? After a decade of understanding learning analytics solutions at Continu, I've discovered a concerning pattern: Most organizations are investing millions in L&D while measuring almost nothing that matters to executive leadership. The problem isn't a lack of data. Most modern LMSs capture thousands of data points from every learning interaction. The real challenge is transforming that data into meaningful business insights. Completion rates and satisfaction scores might look good in quarterly reports, but they fail to answer the fundamental question: "How did this learning program impact our business outcomes?" Effective measurement requires establishing a clear line of sight between learning activities and business metrics that matter. Start by defining your desired business outcomes before designing your learning program. Is it reducing customer churn? Increasing sales conversion? Decreasing safety incidents? Then build measurement frameworks that track progress against these specific objectives. The most successful organizations we work with have combined traditional learning metrics with business impact metrics. They measure reduced time-to-proficiency in dollar amounts. They quantify the relationship between training completions and error reduction. They correlate leadership development with retention improvements. Modern learning platforms with robust analytics capabilities make this possible at scale. With advanced BI integrations and AI-powered analysis, you can now automatically detect correlations between learning activities and performance outcomes that would have taken months to uncover manually. What business metric would most powerfully demonstrate your learning program's value to your executive team? And what's stopping you from measuring it today? #LearningAnalytics #BusinessImpact #TrainingROI #DataDrivenLearning