The Good News - How L&D gives you 353% ROI for every $1 spent

“Learning is so vital today that we can think of ourselves as living in a learning economy.” – Bradley Staats, author of Never Stop Learning (2018). 

If you own or run a company in Australia, your employees are less engaged than ever. The Trends in Global Employee Engagement Study measures employee engagement with a Say, Stay, Strive model. When Australian employees are asked:

• If they Say positive things about their organisation and act as advocates;

• If they intend to Stay at their organisation for a long time, and;

• If they are motivated to Strive to give their best efforts to help the organisation succeed,

 …only 62% in the 2017 study answered positively, which is three points lower than the previous year, and lower than the Global average (63%), Latin America (75%) and North America (64%). However, we did do better than Europe (58%) and Africa (61%).

But the great news is, one solution to engagement is not costly.

What do staff want that will keep them engaged, and give you a return on investment?

According to talent management platform Clear Company, it’s training and development.

“It’s a “no-duh” in leadership that rewards and recognition are powerful motivators, but it’s a lesser-known fact that employee development is in high demand as a motivator,” says Clear Company’s report into staff satisfaction.

Poor job training will lose you employees

That’s right. The most discretionary spending item for your business is actually up with the most important.

• A study by professional services company Accenture showed that for every dollar invested in training, companies received $4.53 in return. That’s a 353% ROI.
• Clear Company’s most recent research found 68% of workers say training and development is the most important workplace policy. 87% of millennials say professional development or career growth opportunities were very important.
• Employees cited lack of skills training and development as the main reasons they chose to voluntarily leave their positions. And, 40% of employees who receive poor job training will leave their positions within the first year.
• Ambitious, employees who take initiative are exactly the employees who want training, coaching and mentoring, and those happen to be the same employees that we refer to as “quality talent” or “engaged employees”. These employees desire the skills and want to be more valuable and versatile.

Best of all, training and development can be offered via e-learning. For example, a Leadership Pass is used by thousands of businesses across Australia as an effective engagement tool for the leadership team and staff.

Libby Nutt, General Manager – Marketing and Export Sales for Casella Family Brands (makers of the Yellowtail wine range and other brands) is a Premium Leadership Pass holder and uses Growth Faculty's video platform to increase teamwork and learning.

“We have had a great experience in watching the (business how-to) videos in the boardroom. We see what we can implement across the team. We’re stronger and better as a result.”

She also gives out the business books that are curated by Growth Faculty managing director Karen Beattie, and sent out 8 times a year. 

“It’s great to get the books, and I’ve read a few,” she says. Libby says she now keeps a business library in the office.

ROI of learning

True Focus Media reports that companies utilising e-learning tools “have the potential to boost productivity by 50%. For every $1 the company spends, it’s estimated they can receive $30 worth of productivity.”

The formula for calculating training ROI is % ROI = (benefits ÷ costs) x 100. Can you use this formula to calculate the ROI of Growth Faculty's Leadership Pass?

Let’s try it with Northern Michigan University training and development educator Leigh Dudley’s five-step approach for attaining the data for calculation. 

1. Collect post-training data: After watching and discussing Growth Faculty On Demand business author interviews, gather data through a few of these suggestions: knowledge questionnaires, performance metrics, employee feedback, assessment of new information and skills employees are using on the job, increased speed and quality, and supervisors’ observations.
2. Isolate the effects of training: Compare pre-training and post-training performance, or comparing trained with untrained groups.
3. Convert data to monetary values: A challenging step converting output data to profit contribution or cost savings, perhaps via supervisors’ and senior managers’ assessments of improvement.
4. Tabulate program costs: For Growth Faculty, this would be the cost of a Premium membership, cost of facilities for the program (including electronics); employee salaries for the training time; and costs for needs assessment and evaluation.
5. Calculate the ROI: Now calculating that ROI is the easy part! Using the program benefits and costs collected and quantified in the first four steps, calculate your training program’s ROI as follows: % ROI = net benefits ÷ program costs x 100.

What if they leave?

There’s a meme that gets circulated on LinkedIn and other social media sites, of a conversation between a CEO and a CFO:

CFO: What happens if we spend all this money training our employees and they leave?

CEO: What happens if we don’t, and they stay?

Here’s what will happen, Australian companies will become less competitive.

Canadian employers told to prioritise learning 

A report by Accenture in collaboration with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) encourages Canadian employers to prioritise workplace learning and development to drive competitiveness.

Canadian companies must act to take greater advantage of new technologies to deliver better workplace education and training. This report underscores the critical importance of spending training dollars wisely. - Increasing the Return on Talent Development for Canadian Companies report (Accenture, 2015).

“The thing that many managers seem to instantly forget once they get that corner office is that employees want to be good at what they do, they want to succeed in their position. The problem is usually that they aren’t given the tools or opportunities to do so. Learning, development and training are all great ways to help employees reach their full potential.”

As Bradley Staats, author of Never Stop Learning, the most successful future belongs to those hungry to learn.

“We can’t just be knowledge workers, we must also be learning workers. As Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, has said “Ultimately, the ‘learn it all’ will always do better than the ‘know it all’.” 

If you'd like to increase your professional and personal development why not consider becoming a Leadership Pass Holder with Growth Faculty? Unlimited access to 40 live virtual masterclasses and Global Headliner virtual events - PLUS year-round leadership content at On Demand with videos, podcasts and book summaries. Join a community of knowledge seekers who are inspired by the best. Access $7500+ value for just $398 AUD. See what's included.