Make Sure Your Company’s Reskilling Efforts Pay Off | Harvard Business Review

Upskilling and reskilling is the top priority for many learning and development organizations, according to the 2021 Linked Workplace Learning Report. Simultaneously, demonstrating the return-on-investment (ROI) of learning initiatives is increasingly important. However, as noted in this HBR article, many companies measure the impact of their investments in reskilling programs using soft metrics like completion rates, satisfaction scores, or employee feedback. The author suggests four measures that show the ROI of skill-building programs: 1) Cost metrics, or comparing the costs of reskilling with the costs of not doing so (e.g., recruiting costs). 2) Productivity metrics that quantify the impact of skill-building on the speed with which tasks are executed. 3) People metrics, such as employee retention, that show the link between upskilling investments and employees’ desire to stay with the company. 4) Sponsor satisfaction, or asking whether managers see a difference in their team’s performance after the reskilling effort. For more information on this topic, you can check out two books: Proving the Value of Soft Skills: Measuring Impact and Calculating Roi and Learning Analytics: Using Talent Data to Improve Learning Outcomes.