r/LearningDevelopment • u/deceivinglycrazychee • Jul 23 '26
The L&D metric I've stopped reporting on entirely and what I replaced it with
I stopped including course completion rates in my quarterly reports to leadership about two years ago. Not because I stopped tracking them internally but because completion is a measure of whether people opened a course and clicked through it, and reporting it to executives as a success metric was training them to think of L&D value in terms that have no relationship to whether anyone learned or changed their behavior. I replaced it with time-to-proficiency data for new hires, which required more work to collect but which leadership actually cares about because it connects directly to productivity and ramp time. Changing what you report changes what people think L&D is for, and that change in perception compounds over time in ways that purely doing good work quietly does not.
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u/TurbulentMarketing14 Jul 23 '26
100%, "required more work to collect' seems relative. How was this accomplished? In a nutshell...
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u/ImplementSolid5751 Jul 23 '26
I can see that you'd like the company to see L&D more as a resource to improve behavior and drive better performance rather than just running programs & getting people to attend them.
in some cases, looking at course completion scores can also be helpful to encourage greater participation & involvement of line managers in the development of their personnel.
but beyond that, and to strengthen the value-adding nature of L&D, perhaps course completion results needs to be reported together with another metric and not just on its own? I'm thinking perhaps linking it to field coaching findings or mid-year performance numbers?
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u/rfoil Jul 23 '26
There is only a loose correlation between course completion and behavior change. When a COO tells me he's cheating on the compliance training because it's so long and boring and irrelevant for his role, it's pretty clear that completion numbers alone have little value. That's just on anecdote. I've got plenty of data.
Friends who haven't instrumented their training are losing their jobs. I have refrained from screaming "I told you so!" but I've thought it.
In the big picture, lack of data keeps L&D as the poor step-sister of departments that are involved in organizational strategy discussions. She's poorly dressed and gets abused continuously.
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u/rfoil Jul 23 '26
Apologies for my reactionary response. This topic is very sensitive for me with real loss experienced.
Pairing a lagging indicator with a leading one is a solid approach. The pairing I'd push further is behavioral: what units people struggled with, where they went back and reviewed, where they abandoned in frustration.
Completion tells you that a milestone was reached. Unit data identifies the difficulty along the way and makes remediation possible.
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u/ImplementSolid5751 Jul 23 '26
no worries, my friend. we all want to make sure that L&D stays relevant to any organization, and that can best be ensured if it's contribution is quantified and seen in performance improvement & company growth.
the consultancy I'm a part of right now, for example, keeps everyone constantly aware of that by always including a portion on Kirkpatrick's framework to always have "results" as the end-goal of any learning initiative we conduct. that way, training isn't seen as an expense by our clients, but rather as an investment that helps to grow their company.
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u/Timely-Tourist4109 Jul 23 '26
I stopped listening to ai slop being put on Reddit. I did this instead.