Learning program KPIs are essential for any organization looking to make informed decisions and drive optimization across processes. Modern learning tools make KPI data available to learning managers, L&D teams, executives and other professionals involved in producing and analyzing organizational results and performance.

From there, these tools allow them to drill down into learning program KPIs to a granular level of detail and visualize them clearly and insightfully within highly customizable dashboards. As signals of business change, learning program KPIs are right at the heart of the measurement process that starts with goals and drivers, and draws on performance behaviors and various data sources.

The question is, what types of learning program KPIs are the right ones for your organization? In this blog, we look at learning program KPIs in three common areas.

Learning Program KPIs #1: Customer Service

Although many organizations have clear business plans and strategies, their key performance indicators are often very business-focused. Learning tools can help them to rectify this by drilling down to employee-level performance behavior indicators, which are critical when supporting goals such as customer experience.

Identifying the changes in employee knowledge, skills and behavior that need to be supported is key to completing the chain of evidence required for areas such as sales, acquisition, retention and increased product adoption. Once the specific KPIs are established, they can be measured through customer interaction data, contact center systems, uptake of products and more.

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Learning Program KPIs #2: Soft Skills

Measuring soft skills and using them as KPIs is often perceived as a more complex challenge than traditional areas of measurement. When measuring skills such as leadership, networking and keeping up to date with sector developments, a good starting point is to think about where these skills will be demonstrated.

As an example, think of a business wanting to assess and improve the proactive engagement and self-motivation of its staff. It could do this by tracking comments and posts written by employees in a professional capacity on internal social platforms. Or, more controversially, on external social media sites. These behaviors could also demonstrate abilities such as thought leadership.

Although this data can be more difficult to leverage, modern tools make it easier to facilitate, find and measure. Best-of-breed video learning platforms, for example, make user-generated content easy to create. In addition, they allow people to add comments, share expertise and leave ratings and feedback on learning content.

Remember that there may also be some permissions considerations to be taken into account when recording this kind of data, especially in light of changes around data processing laws like GDPR. As performance needs to be tracked at an individual level, securing cooperation from employees to access their external content—such as on sites like LinkedIn—is a critical step.

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Learning Program KPIs #3: Recruitment

While recruitment is not strictly classed as a learning KPI, consolidating all of an organization’s recruiting activity within a single source is crucial in making the entire recruitment process more efficient.

As an example of a departmental or functional KPI, recruiting KPIs can be affected by learning focused on recruiters and hiring managers. For example, if your talent acquisition leaders want to shorten time to fill and increase candidate quality (two common recruiting KPIs), they might create and provide training to streamline selection that covers topics like interviewing and candidate assessments. If hiring managers and recruiters improve their skills in these areas, they can make better hiring decisions faster.

Best-of-breed applicant tracking systems (ATSs) like PeopleFluent Recruitment software facilitate the delivery of microlearning videos within the system, right when recruiters and hiring managers most need the information.

Understanding Learning Program KPIs is Fundamental to Organizational Sucess

When organizations begin to increase their growth through digital capabilities, there are always a variety of data sources to choose from. These may include:

• Competitor analysis
• Sales reports
• Website statistics such as conversion rates and click-throughs
• Tracking customer and partner experience across sites
• Insight data such as customer reviews and surveys

The potential data set to measure against is strong. But to use the available data properly, an organization’s strategy needs a clear idea of the actual KPIs its senior leaders are focusing on.

Without a clear understanding of the KPIs a business wants to optimize, even the most innovative learning programs can ultimately fall short of driving growth. Reach out to key stakeholders at an early strategic stage, establish what KPIs your L&D and HR teams should be supporting, and let your learning tools do the work to measure and demonstrate how those KPIs are being met.

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