[GUIDE] The 5 Step L&D Health Check Process To Drive Better Decisions

Hi!

Welcome to this special practical edition of the ‘Learning Analytics Made Easy’ newsletter. Last week we talked about why keeping an eye on your L&D catalogue’s ‘vital signs’ is crucial to help you:

• Make better decisions

• Identify issues before they become costly problems

• Reduce unnecessary costs

• Highlight opportunities you might be missing

But how do you actually put that theory into practice?

Today, we are breaking down a clear, step-by-step approach to do just that, alongside an example Power BI dashboard you can explore to see exactly what a robust L&D Health Check looks like.

Follow these five simple steps to assess your learning catalogue’s health and take action.

Step 1: Define Your Goal and Desired Outcome

What do you want to achieve?

Start by identifying exactly what you need from your L&D health check. In other words, decide on the outcome that matters most to you. Is it cutting unnecessary costs, improving skill coverage, boosting learner engagement?

First, you’ll want to consider:

• Which metrics are most important?
  (Catalogue size, cost per learning hour, data quality, utilization, or skills coverage.)

• What questions do you need answered?
  For example, “What are my top 10% most costly courses and are they too expensive for the value they deliver?” or “Is more than 95% of my content properly tagged for search and engagement?” or “What external vendor(s) have outdated content?” or “Is program utilization increasing since last year?”

Clear goals keep your process focused. And you do need to make sure your goals are specific enough and can be measured. So the question “Is our internally develop eLearning too expensive?” is not specific enough. Because what is regarded as too expensive? Such a question can only provide actionable insights if you have a clear benchmark or target to compare against. For example, the question “which are my 25% most expensive eLearning programs” is very valid as you compare all eLearning modules against each other. Better still is the question “which eLearning programs cost more that our target of 7.500,- dollar per created learning hour?” as it compares you catalogue health metric against a clear target!

When you know what you want, you can pull and analyze your data more effectively to get real results and take action.

And as always (by now it is becoming almost my ‘Learning Analytics Made Easy’ mantra!) I recommend you start small in an area you are familiar with!

Step 2: Gather Your Data

It’s time to find the relevant data.

Most of the data you require to do a Catalogue Health Check can be extracted from your Learning System. Most L&D teams have a Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Experience Platform (LXP). One of the nice things about the Health Check is that you should be able to get easy access to this type of data.

2 additional sources can elevate your Health Check to the next level:

1. Finance data that tells you how much each program costs in terms of design, development, deployment delivery and maintenance. This data could also be recorded in your LMS or LXP!

2. Skills data that tells you what skills are recorded in your organization and which of these skills are strategic skills

When starting small there is no objection at all to using excel. And if you’re a bit comfortable with excel it can help you a lot.

Here’s a small sample of an excel table where specific health calculations have been prepared.

Step 3: Model and Visualize Your Data Using Power BI

“Show me your data!”

We have taken the sample dataset from Step 2 and set up a Power BI dashboard that shows six key pages that cover every angle of your catalogue.

Having a clear, visual representation of your data makes it much easier to see where things are working and where they need a bit of attention. Here’s how the dashboard is constructed:

• Page 1 (Overview): Your high-level snapshot with an overview of all the key health metrics allowing you to immediately see what requires attention and click to the relevant page to see more details

• Page 2 (Catalogue Structure): Showing the number of assets, the total learning hours they represent and the average age, grouped by dimensions like provider, skill, type and other categories.

• Page 3 (Catalogue Costs): A look at several cost metrics like cost per learning hour, per asset, and per completion. Grouped by the same dimensions as page 2.

• Page 4 (Data Quality): Measures how complete your learning program data is. 100% means fully complete.

• Page 5 (Catalogue Utilization): Several metrics like drop-off rates and course completions telling you which assets are well utilized and which not.

• Page 6 (Skills Coverage): How well your catalogue covers the strategic skills your organization needs.

Click here to view an example of a Health Dashboard in Power BI:

You’ll be able to use the filters on each page to narrow down your focus and explore the data in more detail

Can you see any areas where the numbers seem off or where you spot trends that could be improved?

Step 4: Analyze Key Metrics

Compare the data and spot actionable insights.

Now that your data is organized, and visualized with loads of filters, it’s time to look at it more carefully. Step 3 is about comparing the data with your expectations or (when you have them) targets.

The overview page enables you to immediately see the overall health of the catalogue. This is a form of descriptive analytics. It allows you to ignore area’s that are in great shape and focus on the ones that need attention:

Is the slow rise in assets what you expect?

Are the cost metrics within your targets?

One metric in the overview page that does seem to require your immediate attention is the steep increase in drop off rates! What’s going on?

Looking deeper in the date is a form of diagnostic analytics. This is in essence the same process as a doctor who is trying to diagnose an illness. The detailed pages allow you to look at the data from different angles, and drill into the details to find out exactly what is happening and try to find a possible root cause.

Some examples of actionable insights

• Costs (Page 3):
  The average cost per available learning hour is high because we’re using too much (expensive) classroom training programs from the IT Academy for beginner level programs? A possible action would be to transform the classroom training into eLearning modules

• Data Quality (Page 4):
  Podcast titles have zero of the required fields population. Let’s check if the system actually allows us to record this information and talk to the vendor to make this available!

• Utilization (Page 5):
  Focus on drop-off rates. If many learners are not finishing a course, think about why that might be. There’s a “Financial Planning for Beginners” program from a unknown provider that has a drop off rate of 100%! Maybe a candidate to retire?

• Skills Coverage (Page 6):
  Ensure that your catalogue includes enough content on key skills required by your organization. Here there are clearly insufficient programs covering the strategic skills, so it would be prudent to invest there!

Take a moment to answer these questions:

• What metrics deviate from your expectations? Which areas are clearly underperforming?

• Can you tell from the data why?

• Is the data complete and detailed enough to trust your conclusions?

Understanding each metric gives you a clearer picture of where your catalogue is healthy and where it needs a bit of cleaning up or improvement.

Step 5: Identify Practical Actions and Work Them

Now you’ve identified areas that need attention, it’s time to decide on the appropriate action.

Based on the insights you’ve gained from your Power BI dashboard, plan specific actions:

• Clean:
  Remove or update courses that are outdated or poorly documented.

• Build:
  Consider adding new courses to cover critical skills that are missing.

• Improve:
  Revise underperforming courses by updating titles, descriptions, or content length.

• Communicate:
  Ensure that valuable content reaches the right people through better promotion.

For low engagement courses, check the course descriptions and improve clarity.

For high-cost areas, compare the expenditure with learning hours and completions to decide if a course should be revamped or retired.

For gaps in skills coverage, plan new content that aligns with your team’s strategic needs.

With good data, robust interpretation, and a clear plan, you can start to make changes that will show real benefits over time. Which brings us to the final step.

Plan Your Next Move and Act

Take your plan from paper to practice.

Practical actions are the only way to move from insight to improvement. Once you have identified the problem areas and the potential fixes, set up a timeline for making those changes.

Here’s a suggested checklist to put into your calendar:

• Set clear deadlines for updating, adding or retiring courses.

• Schedule regular checks to keep the data fresh and accurate.

• Schedule milestones to review the data again after making changes to see if there is any improvement, or if your current plan needs adjusting.

When you make a change, check how it impacts your Health metrics. This continuous process will keep your catalogue in good shape. It also helps you communicate the value of your actions to other stakeholders with clear visual data, which is excellent for your career and credibility!

But what if you don’t have the time or expertise to set all this up and do it yourself? That’s why we created the L&D Health Check.

Get a Professional L&D Health Check and Action Plan!

Want support getting all of this done so you have a full in-depth overview of the health of your L&D? We’re more than happy to help!

The SLT L&D Health Check gives you:

• A once off snapshot of your learning data that provides immediate insights into 10 critical L&D Health parameters, using state of the art data science tools like Alteryx and Microsoft Power BI.

• Key insights drawn from your data and SLT Consulting’s extensive experience in learning strategy and analytics

• Full access to the dashboard for 30 days to explore and share

Want to find out more?

Reply to this email with “Health” and I’ll let you know exactly how it works.

Have questions about challenges and goals you’re facing with your learning catalogue or L&D? Hit reply to this newsletter and let me know. I read every reply and if I can help, I will!

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Remember, taking the first step is the hardest part, but I’ll be here to guide you along the way.

Let’s make data work for you.

Best,

Peter Meerman

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