ROI and Career Development

When your company upgrades machinery, you can measure the improvement in production. When your company introduces new products or promotions, you can measure the sales impact in revenues. But when your company implements a career development program or a coaching package, it's not as easy to see the effect it's having - at least, not in a traditional sense - because not all the benefits of the training are quantifiable or tangible (think: improved employee self-esteem or morale).

Return on investment, or ROI, can mean a lot of things, but to senior management it is a way of asking, "How much money will this program make/save the company?" Not surprisingly, evaluating the ROI is particularly challenging when the targeted outcome involves soft skills such as improved communication, collaboration and leadership abilities. But studies and corporate bottom lines have shown that companies reap benefits from investing in career development for employees.

Take a look at the list of best companies published in Forbes' "Best Companies to Work For" or Global Finance's "Top Twenty-Five Companies to Watch," and you'll see that the top companies understand that there is real value in career development. Investing in formal learning programs results is higher energy levels among employees, improved communication and problem solving skills, and decreased time spent on resolving issues.

Keep these points in mind when thinking about the ROI of career development:

• Focus on delivering a quality experience that encourages learning and development, and don't go overboard with the calculation of ROI.
• Stay on top of how the program is performing so adjustments can be made to improve the program and justify the dollars spent.
• Show the cost per participant as opposed to the total cost. For example: look at it as an investment of $2,000 per employee who is responsible for $1 million worth of your business.
• The ROI of career development isn't just about dollars: think about it from a quality, effectiveness, and job impact stand point. 
• Evaluation and feedback about the career development program should come from participants, supervisors, and peers.

Maximize Your ROI on Soft Skills

At Ty Boyd, our faculty solicits feedback through conversations to ensure that they are making an impact with our clients before, during and after a course or coaching session. At the end of each course, we ask every participant to fill out a written evaluation form to help us ascertain our success and to determine whether or not there are any unmet needs. We leave plenty of space for comments because if you ask the right question, you might be lucky enough to discover factors that you'd never even considered. Some may think of these measures as "happiness quotients" and insist that they only reveal the entertainment value of the training program, but we feel that measuring participants initial satisfaction with the experience can help us improve the design and delivery of our programs.

Maximize your ROI on soft skills by:

• Defining your expectations and creating a plan for teaching, reinforcement and follow-up
• Ensuring that the skills are taught top-down to create a company culture that supports soft skills training and holds everyone accountable
• Focusing on feedback and encouragement

Ty Boyd has a plan in place to help clients evaluate the most cost-effective course of action to resolving communication issues. Our courses and coaching sessions are designed with results in mind and we are focused on successfully meeting our clients' business and career development expectations. As a result, we develop effective communicators who lead strong teams and organizations - and there's no better return on your investment.