2: What are Metrics that Matter?

Metrics that Matter

As a learning professional you might believe that what the learners believe are the metrics that matter. Was the trainer funny? Was the food good? Was the room too hot or too cold? Did the class start on time? These are not metrics that matter. Other poor metrics that are often collected include: number of courses developed, number of people who registered, number of hours of training completed, and how satisfied are the learners. None of these should matter because they do not matter to the business leaders in your organization.

You need to think about metrics that matter to your stakeholders. Think of your stakeholder as the person who requested the training. What is important to them?

Efficiency- How fast?

Effectiveness- How well?

Outcomes- How much impact?

These are all important to you as a learning professional but you need to determine which of the following questions are important to your stakeholder.

Questions about efficiency:

How many people completed the training?

How many hours did it take for people to complete the training?

Questions about effectiveness:

How did the training go?

How useful is the training to the learners?

How well did the learners perform on the test?

Questions about outcomes:

How did performance change after the training?

Did productivity and quality improve after training?

Are the people who went to training doing better?

Did training solve the problem?

Choose questions that are important to your Stakeholder.

It is important you are strategic about what you choose to measure, keeping the end goal in mind.

Learner satisfaction rarely converts to impact. Just because people like a training, does not mean they will change their behavior on the job.