Determining the impact of learning programs continues to be a real challenge for many organizations. Surprisingly few have a systematic approach to measuring the impact of their L&D initiatives, particularly when it comes to actions designed to improve capabilities or interpersonal skills, such as leadership or soft skills.
However, understanding the impact of these initiatives on participants, beyond the immediate perceived satisfaction, is a key factor in justifying the investments made.
Moreover, objectively assessing the impact of these programs allows you more influence and resources to put toward development programs, which, in turn, increases the learning team’s impact on organizational transformation.
Yet, measuring this impact is not easy. A number of factors can influence the results of a learning program, and this is particularly true for those focused on soft skills. For example, how do we measure the impact of a program designed to increase the creativity of our managers? Or the impact of an initiative focused on the communication skills of senior executives? Or a training focused on their ability to be more collaborative and less “top-down”?
Making the unmeasurable measurable
One solution to this challenge is to apply the “test and learn” approach. This makes it possible to evaluate the results of a training on the visible behaviors impacted by the soft skills we wish to develop.
How do we do this? By measuring the presence and intensity of these key behaviors in individuals who have completed the training and comparing them with those acquired by other employees who have not yet completed the same module (the control group).
To illustrate the use of the test and learn approach, let us take the example of a program designed to develop creativity in managers. Creativity is becoming a key factor for professional success — and a recent LinkedIn study even ranked it as the most sought-after soft skill by companies in 2020.
The question, therefore, is knowing how to develop creativity using test and learn. The starting point of the approach is to define the learning objective and the way to make this soft skill tangible, or observable. After discussions with different learning stakeholders and after having consulted the literature on the subject, our Carrefour team decided to measure creativity by the number of solutions proposed by a manager confronted with a specific business issue. The more solutions a manager offers to solve a problem, the more creative they are.
In parallel, the team designed a one-day training program to boost creativity and tested the program beforehand with a few participants so the final program was ready to go. Four-hundred managers were selected to participate in the test and learn, with 200 of them being randomly assigned to the test group that would participate in the training, and the other 200, who did not attend the creativity training, assigned to the control group.
An experimental approach
Before the training was rolled out, the two groups of managers also participated in a working session in which they were invited to read a business case and come up with as many solutions as they could think of. The figure below shows the number of solutions proposed by the two groups (control and test) before and after the training.
The graph shows there is no significant difference in the number of solutions proposed by both of the groups before the training. This indicates that managers in the two groups had a similar level of creativity before the training.
The 200 managers of the test group then attended the creativity training session as planned. A few weeks later, both of the groups participated in a new working session, with a task similar to the first one: To examine a new business case and come up with as many solutions as possible to address it. The responses of the two groups are represented in orange in the graph. It is clear that the managers who attended the training session showed more creativity, suggesting a larger number of solutions (7.8 solutions on average) than the control group (6.1 on average). This shows that the training increased the creativity of managers who attended the training by 26 percent compared with those in the control group.
The key is to have targeted trainings
This test and learn approach can be used for all programs that aim to develop intangible skills in our organizations. Moreover, it is particularly relevant for comparing approaches, ultimately helping to identify the most effective.
For example, in the context of the creativity training discussed above, the training team could have developed two different versions of the proposed session, each using a different pedagogical approach (for example, one version involving coaching sessions and the other not using coaching). The results would allow us to select the best training approach, which would be the one that leads to higher levels of creativity among the managers. This training version could then be compared with new versions that integrate other teaching innovations and that could be tested following the same approach — the entire process thus generating a virtuous cycle of innovation and continuous improvement ingrained into the test and learn approach.
Test and learn is a powerful approach that can help learning functions better measure the impact of their programs, contributing to more efficient upskilling in their workforce, accelerating transformation and building true competitive edge.
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June 15, 2021 at 11:20PM
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'Test and learn': A powerful approach to measure the impact of soft skills development - Chief Learning Officer
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