Seven out of ten times, the first budget to be cut when budget freezes happen is the L&D budget. It's not because companies don't value learning. It's because they lack enough evidence to support the request. 

Of course, your smile sheets can help you make a better argument, but they are not the ultimate indicators of your employee's performance and productivity. And now, with remote work claiming the center stage, the room for guesswork has narrowed. Organizations are relying on their L&D teams to build accurate learning strategies that ensure upskilling their employees. But the problem here is not the uncertainty of times. It's our unpreparedness. 

We always talk about how data should be the foundation of all our strategies. But according to a study, it reported that L&D leaders are facing structural and capability barriers, because—  

                       51% of companies cited L&D's lack of in-house data skills as the primary concern for their inability to deal with what is in front of them.                                                                                                                                     —Towards Maturity, L&D's Relationship with Data  

So, we got one of our own skill gaps here, and closing this gap is no rocket science. Here's how you can enable the wealth of opportunities hidden inside your people's data.  

Ask What's Your Takeaway 

Begin by asking the right questions, like; why your organization needs a data-driven learning strategy and what learning goals you are targeting. Most companies depend on it to: - 

• Quantify the impact of learning programs on ROI  

• Identify skill gaps and leverage the performance of the learning modules  

• Personalize the employee learning experience  

• Target specific business challenges and skill gaps  

• Determine the flow of expenses on learning programs 

Pay Attention to Your Learner's Digital Body Language  

Digital Body Language or DBL is the way your learners are telling you their likes, dislikes, and levels of engagement in an electronic format. Steve woods first developed the concept in 2009 to help marketing teams understand their customers. L&D professionals are now using the same idea to follow their learner's interests and goals. The signals your learners are sending via their digital presence speaks to their learning behavior. It provides you with an opportunity to design courses that meet your people's interests and goals. 

Reimagine Data Collection 

We often create learning programs based on our intuition and feedback. In other words, we deliver a course hoping it would work. When it doesn't, we look at completion rates and smile sheets to come up with a solution. But your LMS can track far more qualifying data than completion rates and reviews. 

Consider metrics like top search terms, failed search terms, incomplete courses to locate where exactly is the room for improvement. Other parameters, like most active times of the day or week, frequently visited pages, trending articles, and devices used for consumption (mobile or laptop), can give you deeper insights into your people's learning behavior and digital body language.  

Find Insights with Data Analytics 

As data accumulates, it demands you to mine, refine and analyze to derive meaningful insights. Most organizations lack the resources to accomplish these tasks. They depend on machine learning and business intelligence tools for holistic solutions. So, choosing the right tool that aligns with your company's goals is essential.  

Unlock the power of your learner's data with Chasma Analytics. Schedule a Demo 

Respond with User-based Recommendations 

Now that you've found your insights, it's time to respond accordingly with your recommendations. Findings regarding most visited pages, most active times, and devices of consumption counsel you on when and where to deliver a program. If your learners prefer videos over text format, you know how to pack it too.   

Not all businesses operate on the same metrics, but all companies want their people to learn and grow continuously. Making personalized recommendations based on their interests motivates your employees.  

Measure the Differences  

You've collected your data, found your insights, made your recommendations, and accomplished your goals. Great, but the job is only half-done. The other half lies in measuring the differences between the results obtained and input data. This is what quantifies the effects of L&D on our businesses. On further investigation, if you can correlate these results with your company's ROI, you have a strong business case to make.  

And then Repeat  

After demonstrating your results and finding the key metrics that influence your employees' learning behavior, pat yourself, and repeat it. Draw your conclusions from one cycle and use that data while creating another. This enables a chain of improvement for your employees.  

Conclusion  

With employees benefiting from your intelligent recommendations, you can have your mini-Eureka moments. But if you can mold these moments into a whole, you can harness a continuous data-driven learning environment across your organization. 

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.