Before and after photos are the #1 marketing tool of those selling miracle weight loss and fitness programs. Although we see these images everywhere, they endure as really compelling testimonials to the effectiveness of these solutions.
Learning professionals could learn a thing or two from the fitness industry:
- It's important to measure
- Once you've measured improvement, it's important to clearly communicate those improvements to others (including those who fund your learning initiatives).
- Your "after" measurements should be ongoing (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc.)
If you're considering acquiring your first learning management system (LMS), consider taking some snapshots—figuratively speaking— of your current situation. Here are some of the things you may want to measure while you're still managing learning manually:
- Travel and accommodation costs to send learners and instructors to face-to-face training sessions in remote locations
- Cost in loss of productivity when learners are sent away for training
- Your current employee turnover rate
- The administrative cost of maintaining paper records
- The cost of manually printing and mailing certificates
- The cost of creating an instructor-led, classroom based course
- The cost of paper and printing (instructor guide, handouts, etc.) for traditional classroom-based instruction
- The amount of time it takes to create a course and deliver it to learners in a face-to-face setting
- Estimated time and cost to provide compliance professionals with training records in the event of an audit
- Estimated CO2 emissions from the cost of sending learners to remote locations for learning
Can you think of others? Please submit them as comments for others to read.
