Value Mapping

Value mapping educational content could help you maximize the ROI of your training spend.

We all know that something’s value has to do with how much it is worth but when it comes to training, how do you determine value? If you're company develops or licenses training, defining value should be part of your decision making process.
There are always costs associated with employee training; development or licensing fees, delivery fees and the time employees spend in training. For the purposes of this article I’ll refer to training programs as learning products and limit the discussion to learning products that are delivered using the internet.

Return on investment (ROI) for organizations that sell training is pretty easy to figure out but when it comes to training that has been developed for employees, determining ROI is more complex. The focus of this article is to provide organizations a process that can be used to help determine a learning products value which should influence where training budget funds are allocated.

“How do you decide what training you're going to make available to your employees to help grow your business?”

This question is the foundation of value mapping.

Value mapping falls into four categories;

• What is the value of this learning product to the employee?
• What is the value of this learning product to the organization?
• To what degree will this learning product grow the value of the company - drive revenue?
• What risk to the company’s value does this learning product mitigate?

Using a spreadsheet, list all the courses you intend to offer in a given year and determine a value of 1-5 for each category. Some courses are mandatory so you don’t need to include them in your list.

Once you have completed your list, take a look at the sum value score. The courses with the highest score are probably your most valuable but this process includes one more element, competency measurement. How do you measure competency?

The value of a course can be greatly diminished if the training does not include good questions that have relevant context. This is especially true for licensed content as these courses include questions but most often they are not specifically aligned to your business. Take another look at the courses in your value map and add a final column specific to questions, using the same 1-5 scale enter a value for question relevance.

Now that you have completed your value map, courses with the highest value should provide the biggest impact to your ultimate directive, revenue growth and maintaining a positive corporate culture. High value courses will most likely provide the greatest ROI as well.

On a side note, don’t shy away from off-the-shelf training, many learning management systems support the capability to add a custom post assessment after the learner has completed the course. This would allow you the opportunity to ask questions that have workplace context if the questions included in the course don’t directly relate to your business.

I hope you find this useful and please comment. If you would like to discuss this approach further please contact me directly.