Making a Business Case for Positive Change
All around the world, things involving the economy seem to be moving slowly. Senior leaders are cautious about making decisions, especially when so much rides on the decisions they make. This appears to be especially true in the world of training and human resource development.
Learning and HRD professionals, therefore, need to make extra effort to first gain the attention of our business leaders, and then to elicit proactive decisions from them. A phrase that is of particular importance today is “making a business case”. No longer are decisions involving our services and our budgets being made just because “this is what we have done in the past”. We need to make business cases to our senior business leaders if we want to get anything new done in the area of HRD.
There are several places in the scope of our work where making a business case to our business partners might be worthwhile.
| Conducting an Impact Study |
| Everyone seems to be concerned about making sure investments in training are bringing about positive results that exceed that investment. Propose to business leaders that you conduct an impact study on one or two key programs. This will involve selecting program(s) that have high potential business impact, a significant upfront investment of resources and dollars to roll out, and is an ‘eye-catcher’ to your key stakeholders. An impact study would be utilizing all four levels of Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation to put together a compelling chain of evidence demonstrating how training led to learning which led to behavior change which led to key results. This, of course, requires that positive results have actually occurred, which will mean enacting what we call the business partnership model to make sure reinforcement after training occurs. Make sure you use a balance of data and testimonials as you put your evidence together for this highly important showcase program – the purpose of which is to show the power of what training can do if properly planned and executed. |
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| Cleaning Your Training Program Portfolio |
| In all probability, many of the training programs you are offering do little to advance the strategic goals of the organization. Now would be a great time for you to conduct a study to determine which are really leveraging results, and which are what Frank Anderson from the U.S. Defense Acquisition University calls, “Scrap Training”. This will show your business stakeholders that you are serious about providing value, and will offer an opportunity to cut unnecessary training costs (rather than necessary training staff). |
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| Redeploying your Training Resources |
| If you have too many resources involved with the design, development, and delivery of training programs – all matching up with Kirkpatrick Levels 1 and 2, consider redeploying people to work with the business on Level 3. This will help build credibility that your learning function and efforts are directly involved and concerned with the business, and will help execute your organization’s business strategy. Refer to any of my articles on L3 for details. |
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| Leveraging Training Effectiveness Through the Business Partnership Model |
| If you want to see results increase from your training efforts, make a business case to managers and supervisors to reinforce the knowledge and skills you teach their employees. Observation, feedback, coaching, monitoring action plans, encouraging positive application, and mentoring are some of the best ways to leverage the training dollars that your business partners have invested in your work and their people. Try to make them see that the more that happens after training will lead to increased execution of their strategies. |
Let us know if you have any questions about these methods, or would like any help.
SMR USA's Public Sessions, 2009
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This 2-day program has been officially sanctioned by the International Society for Process Improvement (ISPI) and is worth 12 ISPI credits toward re-certification.
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