Return on Investment for Customized Training

Why invest in training for your staff?

“An investment in education always pays the highest returns.”
— Ben Franklin

“What’s worse than training your workers and losing them? Not training them and keeping them.”
— Zig Ziglar, success speaker

Studies and corporate bottom lines show that companies reap many benefits from investing in training for employees.

Training improves employee performance…in quality, quantity, speed, safety, problem solving, attitude, ethics, motivation, leadership, and communication. According to Ferdinand Fournies, performance problems occur because employees:

  1. don’t know what they’re supposed to do,
  2. don’t know how to do it, and/or
  3. don’t know why they should do it. Targeted training is one solution to all three factors.

Training enhances company profits. Training ups revenue in increased sales, increased referrals, new product ideas, and improved customer satisfaction and retention. According to the American Society for Training and Development, investment in employee training enhances a company’s financial performance. An increase of $680 in a company’s training expenditures per employee generates, on average, a 6 percent improvement in total shareholder return.

Based on the training investments of 575 companies during a three-year period, researchers found that firms investing the most in training and development (measured by total investment per employee and percentage of total gross payroll) yielded a 36.9 percent total shareholder return as compared with a 25.5 percent weighted return for the S&P 500 index for the same period. That’s a return 45 percent higher than the market average. These same firms also enjoyed higher profit margins, higher income per employee, and higher price-to-book ratios.

Firms that invest $1,500 per employee in training compared with those that spend $125 experience an average of 24 percent higher gross profit margins and 218 percent higher revenue per employee (source: Laurie J. Bassi et al., “Profiting From Learning: Do Firms’ Investments in Education and Training Pay Off?” American Society for Training and Development, 2000).

The Cheesecake Factory, one of the most successful restaurant chains in the nation, spends about $2,000 per employee for training each year and reaps sales of $1,000 per square foot—more than twice the industry average.

Training saves labor…by reducing duplication of effort, time spent on problem solving, and time spent on correcting mistakes.

Training saves money. A better skilled workforce means fewer machine breakdowns, lower maintenance costs, lower staff turnover, lower recruitment costs, fewer bad debts, fewer customer support calls, fewer help desk calls, less need for supervision, reduced downtime, and increased worker productivity.

Training improves a company’s competitive edge. According to Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, “Any company has to recognize that not only is the human capital of their employees a major asset, it is also a depreciating asset that needs continuing investment”. Keeping worker skills up to date keeps a company in the running.

Training increases worker productivity. Just a 2-percent increase in productivity has been shown to net a 100 percent return on investment in training (source: “The 2001 Global Training and Certification Study”, CompTIA and Prometric).

Motorola calculated that every dollar spent on training yields an approximate 30 percent gain in productivity within a three-year period. Motorola also used training to reduce costs by over $3 billion and increase profits by 47 percent (source: Tim Lane et al., “Learning to Succeed in Business with Information Technology,” Motorola).

Training saves supervisory and administrative time and costs. The less time and money a manager has to spend on monitoring and guiding employees, the more time is freed up for more profitable activities.

Training improves customer satisfaction. Better-quality work means better-quality products and services resulting in happier customers.

Training improves employee satisfaction and retention. Many people assume that once employees are trained, they are more likely to leave the company for greener pastures, but actually, the opposite is true: trained staff are happier and more likely to stay put. Their self-esteem improves, which in turn improves their morale in the workplace and their loyalty to their employer.

A Louis Harris and Associates poll reports that among employees with poor training opportunities, 41 percent planned to leave within a year, whereas of those who considered their company’s training opportunities to be excellent, only 12 percent planned to leave. A Hackett Benchmarking and Research report shows that companies that spend $218 per employee on training have more than a 16 percent voluntary turnover, while companies that spend over $273 per employee have turnovers of 7 percent.

The Cheesecake Factory, which as mentioned above, spends an average of $2,000 on training per hourly worker each year, has an employee retention rate of about 15 percent better than the national average.

Career development is the No. 1 factor in employee retention, according to a survey of 6,400 employees conducted by consultants Sharon Jordan-Evans and Beverly Kaye.

In an AON survey, respondents ranked “opportunities for personal growth” as the main reason they took their current job and stayed in that job. Significantly, they ranked it ahead of salary.

According to a study by Louis Harris & Associates for Interim Services Inc., companies that fail to train their employees are more than three times as likely to lose them.

Investment in professional development training is a win-win for company and employee alike.

Calculating Your Return on Investment (ROI) for Training

When to calculate ROI

Not all the benefits of training are quantifiable; many are intangible, such as improved employee self-esteem and morale. Moreover, trying to set a monetary value on the value of training is complex, and therefore probably not worthwhile for a short course delivered to a small number of employees. So when is it worth the time and effort to do all the company research and cost-to-benefit ratio calculations?

  • when the training program will have a long shelf life
  • when the program will serve many participants
  • when the program represents a sizable investment of company resources
  • when the “before” and “after” performance factors are tangible, can be quantified in some manner (i.e., with measurable indicators), and can be assigned monetary values

How to calculate ROI

There are many different ways to calculate ROI. For information on the various theories and methods, consult the bibliography below.

Selective Bibliography on Return on Investment

ROI Overview and the Pros and Cons of ROI Calculation
Barron, Tom, “Is there an ROI in ROI? Another Look at Evaluating Training Programs.”

Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), 1998.
Cross, Jay, “A Fresh Look at Return On Investment,” white paper.  SmartForce: The e-Learning Company, 2000.

Parry, Scott B., “Measuring Training’s ROI, Another Look at Evaluating Training Programs.”
Washington, DC: American Society for Training & Development, 1998.

Phillips, Patricia P. and Jack J., “The Bottom Line on ROI: Basics, Benefits, & Barriers to Measuring Training & Performance Improvement.”  DC: The Center for Effective Performance, 2002.
Tobin, Daniel R., “The Fallacy of ROI Calculations,” Corporate Learning Strategies.
Methods of Calculating ROI

Brauchle, Paul E., “Costing Out the Value of Training, Another Look at Evaluating Training Programs.”  Washington, DC: American Society for Training & Development, 1998.

Conner, Marcia L., “How do I measure return on investment (ROI) for my learning program?”  Training & Learning FAQs, Learnativity.com. 2002.

Martin, John, “ROI: Do It & Prove It,” ASTD, 2001.
Phillips, Jack J., Return On Investment in Training and Performance Improvement Programs. Gulf Publishing, 1997.

“Was It the Training?” ASTD, 2001.
Setaro, John L., “Is It Worth the Cost? Calculating the ROI for Training,” mytrainingserver.com/news.
Shepherd, Clive. “Assessing the ROI of Training,” Fastrak Consulting, 1999.

ROI Calculators (Online Tools, Software)

Training ROI Worksheet.

An Excel worksheet allowing calculation of the real or actual cost of training:
www.workplacebasicskills.com/non_frame/free_tools/roi/worksheet.htm

ROI Calculator for Training Methods.

An Excel workbook for comparing costs and determining ROI of various training methods:
www.mediapro.com/html/resources/roi.html

Advisor.

A media selection and ROI decision support tool that helps the user analyze a course to decide the most economical blend of instructional delivery methods.
www.bnhexpertsoft.com

Training’s effects ripple throughout the organization

Hotel Monticello, located in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., has already increased their 2007 training budget to meet the needs of their associates. The boutique hotel’s General Manager, Rob Suter, finds that training empowers employees and adds value to the organization as a whole: “It eases the burden on management when employees can alleviate situations immediately before they boil over”, says Suter. “From a guest complaint to a problem with a room – whatever the situation is, when employees can resolve issues, it reduces stress for everyone.”

Increased employee efficacy and decreased workplace stress, Suter points out, results in a bonus: “It leads to satisfaction for the customer.”

Suter’s observations are echoed in the current research, such as a recent study by Steven W. Schmidt to examine the link between employer-provided workplace training and employee job satisfaction. The Schmidt analysis reveals that people whose jobs involve face-to-face interaction with their customers – like those in the hospitality industry – are most likely to value training for its ability to help them engender customer satisfaction. That same study found that employees frequently named training opportunities as a top consideration in choosing and staying with an employer. Similar results came out of a survey by Aon Consulting and The Society for Human Resource Management, which determined that opportunity (or lack thereof) for professional development is one of the top reasons cited by employees who voluntarily leave one company for another.

The correlation of employee training to employee retention is nothing to sneeze at; some studies have attributed a retention increase by as much as 70 percent to employee training. That can have a huge impact on your bottom line, especially when you consider the resources that go into establishing a new hire into your organization. And retention isn’t the only benefit of employee training as it relates to smooth operations and financial concerns. Training increases employee efficiency and productivity (some say up to 230 percent). It also keeps employees up-to-date with new technology and current best practices, resulting in superior job performance.

“The education definitely helps with job performance,” says Alyeska Resort Human Resources Administration Assistant Mary Williamson, adding, “It starts with management and carries on from there.” Although training for all of their employees is highly valued, Williamson says management training probably has the most widespread impact on the resort overall. Alyeska, which features 304 rooms and more than one thousand acres of ski slopes 40 miles south of Anchorage, Alaska, provides ongoing training programs for new and continuing management.

Whether communicating must-have information for a new hire who’s transitioning into your hotel or restaurant, or offering an opportunity to an individual who’s ready to take that next step forward in his or her career, employee training’s effects are far-reaching. From enhanced performance and increased job satisfaction, to strengthened problem-solving skills and alleviated stress, and ultimately to customer satisfaction – it’s almost impossible to count the numerous ways that employee training benefits the entire organization. But then again – have you ever tried to count the ripples in a pond after you’ve tossed a pebble?

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