Corporate University: Measuring the Impact of Learning

Examine best practices and key trends in business education. Explore training evaluation and measurement, focusing on the alignment of employee learning with corporate strategy, identification and reporting of learning measurements, and performance consulting, in The Corporate University: Measuring the Impact of Learning.

KEY FINDINGS

• Needs assessments clarify the purpose of M&E activities and are critical to delivering a comprehensive program.
• Aligning the whole organization and building an appropriate support system will yield a comprehensive and effective evaluation program.
• Best-practice organizations maximize the use of automation to present different types of evaluation data to a variety of target audiences.
• Best-practice organizations recognize that although evaluation is a micro-level activity, there is a strong need to combine evaluation data to develop a macrolevel view of the impact on the corporate university.
• Best-practice organizations are moving up the corporate chain of impact to use the profit center to measure the contribution of the corporate university.
• Most best-practice organizations have made progress measuring the application and impact of learning but are struggling to find a consistent, routine process.
• Best-practice organizations continually benchmark internally and externally. Some organizations join communities of practice to monitor M&E development.
• Successful corporate universities use evaluation data in a variety of ways.
• Organizations want to use ROI but are struggling with how to calculate it and what to do with the results.
• Best-practice organizations commit significant resources to evaluation programs.
• A variety of skill sets and roles that complement evaluation teams are included in these resources.
• M&E programs must accommodate an organization's changing needs.
• Best-practice organizations continuously communicate the assessment activities and results to their constituents.
• Best-practice organizations have begun to shift toward performance consulting to identify skill gaps and find solutions to fill these gaps outside of the traditional training model.