In 2016, the workplace learning industry reached $360 billion. And its market share and influence has only continued to increase across the globe with each passing year since.
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However, as more and more organizations begin to participate in the workplace learning market, many of them will not be able to drive successful or effective learning and development (L&D) initiatives. Why? Because many organizations will start engaging with and developing L&D initiatives based on fleeting or quickly evolving marketplace trends without ever considering their very own performance metrics.
Below are three performance metrics you should weigh if you want to develop and drive strategic and effective L&D initiatives that will continue to help your organization outpace its competition for years to come.
1. Profit Margins and Sales Revenue
When developing your L&D initiatives, you should always consider your organization’s gross profit margin and sales revenue. And you want to consistently verify that your L&D initiatives are yielding a high return on investment for your organization. You don’t want to ever be in a position where you’re spending more on your L&D initiatives than what they’re worth to your organization.
If you don’t allow your organization’s financial projections to drive the budget for your L&D initiatives, you’ll find yourself constantly abandoning programs before they’re fully developed or spending too much (or too little) on your learning resources overall.
2. Customer Satisfaction Ratings and Retention
You will want to constantly monitor your customer satisfaction ratings to determine what types of L&D initiatives you’ll want to focus on or improve. For instance, if customers are highly unsatisfied with your organization’s ordering process, you’ll want to focus on L&D initiatives that coach your employees how to process orders more efficiently.
Or, if you notice a drop in your customer retention rates overall, you’ll want to focus your L&D initiatives on training employees how to provide better customer service, and so on.
3. Legal Liabilities, Security Breaches, and Operational Errors
Whenever your organization experiences an increase rate of legal liabilities (i.e., worker compensation suits, malpractice suits, consumer concerns, insurance costs, etc.) or has faced a greater number of security breaches or operational errors that have resulted in significant or increasing financial losses for your organization, it’s time to train (or retrain) employees. You can use such metrics to drive safety and operational training initiatives, as well as routine employee onboarding.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, which will cover additional performance metrics that you should weigh if you want to develop and drive strategic and effective L&D initiatives that will continue to help your organization outpace its competition for years to come.