Learning analytics – How to evaluate if your 2022’s learning strategies drove the value

Midsized companies’ average workplace learning expenditure surged from $808,355 in 2020 to $1.3 million in 2021. Fortunate to be in one of these organizations that extended their spending and approved the L&D budget at the start of the year? However, after investing a considerable amount in employee development, the company would expect the best return on its investment that positively impacts the business. You might have surely anticipated that and crafted impactful workplace learning strategies for 2022. But did your L&D strategies succeed in delivering the desired results and driving business impact? Well, learning analytics can give an apt answer to this question. 

What is learning analytics?

Learning analytics is a calculative approach that focuses on amassing and analyzing L&D insights based on different learning metrics. These insights help L&D managers understand if their planned learning strategies have converted into desired business outcomes.  

Detailed learning analytics provide adaptive guidance for driving better efficiency and more success. It enables L&D to move beyond the surface number and provide proof of true returns on investment. Rather than relying on words to justify the strategies designed and choices made were effective, L&D can leverage concrete analytics to demonstrate the tangible benefits it delivers to drive the business impact. 

How can learning analytics be your guide in identifying the loopholes in 2022’s L&D strategies? 

At the onset of each financial year, the L&D team creates new strategies, sets goals, decides on the budget and gets it approved by the management. While it might be challenging to exceed the goals each year, it is imperative to illustrate the year-on-year growth. With learning analytics, annualized metrics can be displayed across the comparable period to showcase how the L&D is moving upwards with impactful learning strategies. 

Learning analytics gives a holistic picture of what’s working and where you need to walk the extra mile to improve. It helps you identify the roadblocks in your workplace learning strategies that are holding you back from reaching or exceeding the goals. For instance, through in-depth analytics Clara, an L&D manager, found out that employees at the managerial level aren’t enrolling in the courses. So she conducted a session with the managers to understand their learning preferences and aspirations. Accordingly, she tweaked the learning programs, which resulted in a better enrolment rate.  

So, you can map out the point of action for 2023 to present it to the management during the 2022’s L&D budget discussion. With credible numbers derived through learning analytics programs, you can display how you’ve grown from last year and your path forward for addressing the improvement areas to achieve more success.   

Let’s look at one of the learning analytics examples and how it helped in improving the L&D strategies. Ken, an L&D professional, observed that the L&D expenditure was $25,000 in 2020 as he had to outsource speakers and enrol employees into several paid webinars as well as invest in various content providers. By digging into e-learning analytics, he discovered employees are investing more time in learning, but the knowledge-to-performance ratio is still very low. So he changed his approach in 2021. After in-depth research, he learned that most modern companies are embracing the digital learning platform to upskill employees in real-time. Hence spoke to the L&D heads in his network and found out that LXP is a cutting-edge technology for training employees at different levels. So he convinced his manager to invest in a Learning Experience Platform. With an LXP, he could save time, make learning more engaging and track learners’ behaviour to take timely actions. This transition to an online platform like LXP helped them save 10,000$. 

Leverage learning analytics – Key metrics to analyze the success of the learning strategies

Learning strategies can have a huge impact on business outcomes, so their success is of paramount importance for L&D professionals. A granular view of various learning metrics through corporate learning analytics can help determine the effectiveness of the learning strategies. Here are a few essential  L&D analytics metrics that you need to analyze:

Course enrollment success rate

Course enrollment is a basic yet vital metric that can determine the success or failure of your learning strategies. In a buffet of learning programs, it is undoubtedly a matter of concern if the employees are not taking the first step and enrolling in the courses. It indicates that something is wrong with the learning strategies or the plan created for engaging employees, which is why it fails to capture employee interest. Hence it is pivotal to revisit your strategies and change your approach. 

Course completion rate

The completion rate can clearly show how employees respond to your learning programs and what you should consider changing. 

If there is a low completion rate, it is important to identify why the employees choose not to proceed. There are chances that 90% of the employees will complete the courses. However, it is necessary to find out if they retained the information and applied it to work. So ensure you assess the completion rate holistically with other metrics. For instance, the completion rate of the learning video is good, which might give you the impression that employees are learning. However, the low knowledge-to-performance rate implies that the employees might forward and complete the videos without actually learning anything. 

So you might have to change your approach and add assessments in between the videos where the employees cannot move forward without taking the assessments. The assessment will help you understand if employees are actually enhancing their knowledge or just completing the courses. 

Course drop rate 

Again, this metric indicates that the learning strategies might not be impactful leading to a course dropout. The learning programs might not be engaging or relevant to the learners so they are not completing the courses. For instance, the L&D professional has created a generic learning program for sales professionals on how to manage the sales pipeline. But the program does not cover what to do when the deals are stuck at a specific stage of the sales pipeline, like the appointment setting stage or closing deals stage. So, employees enrol but do not find it helpful or relevant enough to proceed and complete the course. Hence it is crucial to find out the reasons for course dropout and rethink the L&D strategies accordingly to deliver learning programs that are relevant to the learners. 

Average assessment score 

Employees are investing time in learning but are they enhancing their skills? It is imperative to evaluate various assessment scores to determine if employees are able to sharpen their skills and enhance their capabilities.

A high-end tool like an LXP platform not only helps in creating a wide array of assessments but also tracks the assessment score. The entire assessment data is streamlined in one place, which helps in tracking the progress of the employees. If the employees are consistently getting a high score, then that figure can work as a lucrative metric. You can present the metric during the L&D budget discussion to demonstrate how your L&D strategies are driving value. However, a low assessment score can work as a red flag to take timely actions to ensure the learner’s progress. 

Knowledge to performance conversion level 

One of the main objectives of learning programs is to fill the performance gaps. So the knowledge of performance conversion metrics helps determine the effectiveness of learning strategies. Your work will be easier if you’ve set performance goals while creating the L&D strategies. For instance, a sales rep has to close eight deals in a quarter, or an SEO executive needs to decrease the month-on-month blog bounce rate from 80% to 40%.

If the employees are able to meet the performance goals, then it is a clear indicator that the L&D strategies are driving impact. If not, then it is time for a one-to-one healthy chat with the learner to understand what’s hampering the performance. An LXP platform can be of great help here as it integrates with various third-party apps that fetch the KPI score making it simpler to track the knowledge to performance rate. 

Level of employee retention 

Most employees are interested in sharpening their skills to advance in their careers. If they feel the company isn’t investing in their growth, they prefer to switch the company. 

As per G2’s research, 58% of workers said they’ve considered quitting as their companies didn’t currently have enough growth opportunities for them to stay long-term. 

Learning and development play a significant role in retaining employees. However, suppose the turnover rate is high, and most employees aren’t satisfied with the corporate learning opportunities. In that case, it is surely time to take a step back and restrategize your learning and development approach.

Level of engagement 

L&D strategies that do not succeed in engaging employees often fall through the cracks. It is clear that engagement is crucial to motivating employees to learn. But how do you measure the level of employee engagement in learning and development? 

Well, here are a few ways to achieve that 

• Track how many employees are self-enrolling in courses 
• Find out how many courses have been liked or shared 
• Conduct a survey to find out what learners think about your learning programs
• Track the number of drop-offs from the courses 
• Track if the knowledge to performance score is high or low 

 Stakeholder satisfaction level 

Each stakeholder has a target to achieve, and teammates’ contribution is pivotal to meeting those targets. For instance, the marketing team has to generate 25 leads in a month. So the SEO professionals, marketing professionals, and content writers need to meet their KPI to contribute to the team goal of generating 25 leads in a month.

Therefore, It is crucial to find out if the learning programs helped develop the essential skills for achieving the set target. Have one-to-one conversations with each stakeholder to understand if the learning initiatives are driving the necessary performance to meet the targets. 

Impact on organizational performance 

Companies leverage learning and development programs to boost sales, improve customer satisfaction, enhance products and attract more buyers. Showing positive numbers in all these areas can help in getting into the good books of the top management and proving that the L&D strategies are aligned with the business goals. Quality learning and development programs not only help in improving individual performance but also have a positive impact on the bottom line of the business. 

Conclusion 

The key to assessing the success of your workplace L&D strategies is by digging deep into learning analytics. We’ve seen the importance of learning analytics in driving performance.  It is critical to show the ROI to a business with a data-driven approach where numbers validate your efforts. Based on the corporate learning analytics insights, you can even plan your strategies for 2023 and avoid the mistakes you made in the current year. 

There are several learning analytics tools that can help you in deriving the necessary metrics. However, instead of investing especially in a learning analytics tool, it’s better to opt for a feature-rich skilling suite that allows you to do a lot more on a single platform. For instance, Disprz LXP, an all-in-one skilling suite, connects learners to content and skilling experiences in a way that is business linked. It helps build the skills the employee requires through AI-based personalized and intuitive learning experiences. It enables you to track and ascertain the necessary skills for each job role within every department. Moreover, you can track and improve your team’s skill readiness with real-time progress and adoption insights. It enables you to slice and dice the learning data to get the specific learning metrics you need to provide the value you are driving with your learning strategies. 

Using Disprz LXP, one of the globally renowned trainings and consulting companies, could drive organizational change. Disprz provided a robust, scalable, and secure platform to help the company consistently achieve successful outcomes. We enabled the client to integrate content from Go1 (200+ content providers) so that users could learn skills with the most relevant in-demand content. Disprz learning journeys and dashboards helped create an engaging user experience by showing users their progress as they learn. A wide variety of assessment formats ensures that knowledge is retained long after it is taught.

 Disprz leaderboard and social features made it easy to drive a continuous learning culture as well as a rewarding experience. Through features like buzz, chat, and teams, the client propelled platform usage to 96%. Disprz analytics helped L&D professionals of the company track real-time progress on learning, engagement, and adoption to understand the effectiveness of the leadership training program. Moreover, the platform offered the ability to customize analytics dashboards with metrics that helped answer the questions regarding the program’s ability to drive organizational change

Below are the results of using Disprz.