Continuum have created proof, an innovative concept which evaluates a range of Learning and Development programmes or initiatives. It evaluates tangible and intangible outputs by utilising the concepts and processes of business scorecarding to link them to financial drivers and generate a financial outcome.
The philosophy allows us to make direct and indirect links to financial return and thus prove Return on Investment both of the indirect and direct training costs, risks and outcomes.
The fundamentals of whether a programme is focussed on a ‘hard’ subject area e.g. sales skills or process change will affect the rationale and design inputs rather than a ‘soft’ programme such as Personal Well-Being or Spiritual Intelligence, however, both can be evaluated. The proof process encompasses the following steps:
Stage 1: Programme Rationale
This stage identifies the community targeted or requiring the learning and for what strategic process – this allows us to begin to associate the linkages to a Balanced Scorecard and assess whether the cost of evaluation will be recouped in the overall ROI proposition.
The expected rate of return is also agreed and tested to ensure that the ROI metrics are fair and robust.
Stage 2: Creation of Evaluation Imperatives
In stage 2 the proof metrics are established as are the opportunities and constraints for deployment. The proposals are checked with the client to ensure that the likely outcomes are still fit for purpose.
A complete range of techniques can be selected to allow us to quantify the actual personal, team and business benefit.
Stage 3: Deployment of proof
The deployment stage allows us to carry out a generic deployment or to maximise the impacts of a more specific or ‘bespoked’ approach which has been designed to evaluate a specific initiative or programme.
proof strenuously avoids the risk of becoming yet another ‘tick box’ survey because of the financial aspect of the analysis. The questions have to be rigorous and thorough enough to derive financial benefit against the expected rate of return.
Stage 4: Analysis of Returns
The analysis is conducted by utilising surveying processes which generate evaluatable returns from a range of data sets – these can be further interrogated to drive out the nature of the financial impact or business benefit required.
In addition, the opportunity for programme improvement can be identified at this point as can scalable suggestions for applying evaluation ‘markers’ to other programmes to ensure that evaluation criteria are considered in the design of other programmes.
Each criteria will be presented as a form of scorecard utilising a simple, yet effective scorecarding process to allow for top-level identification of issues and opportunities.
Stage 5: Reporting & Actions
Finally, proof provides reporting and results in both qualitative and quantitative formats, and through personal face-to-face feedback.
Each ROI training programme will have a series of outputs, including ‘scorecards’ created for them, which displays key findings and learning needs for consideration. Collective findings and results are reported in similar fashion.
Contact us now to discuss how we can help you achieve your ambitions!
