How Healthy is your L&D Catalogue?

Hi!

Welcome to the 3rd edition of the ‘Learning Analytics Made Easy” newsletter. The one newsletter you need to start and build your Learning Analytics skills. Glad you’re with us!

As the year 2025 is still fresh, many of us might recall the new years resolutions we have made to make 2025 the healthiest year yet. In fact, health is so important for us personally that 2 months ago we moved our family and entire business to Portugal to enjoy a more healthy and natural lifestyle!

This newsletter is all about a new concept we are introducing: L&D Catalogue Health. What it is and how to get a clear understanding of the health of your L&D catalogue.

By the end of this issue, you’ll know precisely which five metrics reveal whether your L&D catalogue is thriving or floundering (and the secret behind knowing whether to retire or reinvigorate your content).

You’ll also know exactly how to diagnose the ‘vital signs’ of your learning catalogue, so you can pinpoint which initiatives are dragging you down and which hidden gems deserve a louder voice.

Let’s get started!

First things first….what is Learning? What is your Learning Catalogue? 

Without being to philosophical about it, before we go into discussion what the health and an L&D catalogue is and why it is important, we first need to establish the exact scope and construct of your learning catalogue.

For this we need to move beyond mere training content & courses. Because for me your L&D catalogue is the set of all learning related content, offerings, products and services that you have to offer!

So your L&D Catalogue is your entire collection of learning content, products and services!

And I do realize that this collection can be different from team to team. Some L&D teams only manage formal learning, some L&D teams have a scope that includes knowledge management. And I bet most of you are in some way or the other involved in discussions whether L&D should start building AI bots. The big question being if such an AI bot should be owned by L&D…

When I talk about the L&D Catalogue, I mean all content, products and services that are owned or managed by L&D. It does not matter then how big or small your L&D catalogue is, as long as it is clearly defined. From an analytics perspective this is essential as it directly determines the scope of your Health check!

Now, not all of your catalogue is easy to analyze. Your typical LMS provides much of the data you need for the basics, while your typical LXP goes beyond that and generates much more data on utilization and engagement. Data from knowledge management platforms and, say, AI bots is much harder to get your hands on. But do not worry. As with many things learning analytics, you can start small with the data you have access to and that part of the catalogue that you know best, and tackle the more complicated stuff later on…

What is L&D Catalogue Health?

L&D Catalogue Health is inspired by personal health.

In the past few years, personal health care has grown into a huge industry that has become very data-driven. Gone are the days when doctors relied on mere observation, intuition and pseudo science to diagnose what is wrong with you. Nowadays, almost every aspect of health, from pulse, temperature to blood pressure can be measured and tracked using data and data recording devices. For example. I use my iWatch to track my heartbeat during gym exercises and while cycling in the mountains; checking how much I’m pushing myself. When my iWatch shows a high pulse, I take a break until it’s at a decent level again.

Another one of my favorites is whoop. Possibly the most advanced wearable that “measures your daily behaviours and metrics like sleep, strain, recovery and more, to show you how they all play an interconnected role in how you feel.” Just as these devices help diagnose our physical health, identify area’s that need attention, and track any improvements made.

In the same way, your L&D data can tell you a lot about the ‘health’ of your catalog. We have put our brains and over 20 years of L&D experience together to think which specific metrics would indicate the health of L&D, in the same way as blood pressure, cholesterol and BMI are indicators for personal health. This resulted in the following 6 key metrics:

• Catalogue Size (the ‘Body mass index’ for L&D)

• Costs (the ‘blood pressure’ of L&D)

• Data Quality (the ‘cholesterol levels’ of L&D)

• Catalogue Mix (the ‘body composition’ of your L&D catalogue)

• Utilization (the ‘fitness’ level of your L&D catalogue)

• Skills Coverage (the ‘nutritional’ level of your L&D catalogue)

Like with personal health, you can look at these metrics individually. In the same way as high blood pressure is clearly defined by medical standards and thus it’s easy to check.

But health really comes into it’s own when you look at specific combinations of these metrics!

• Skills coverage and Catalogue Size help you to decide if you have sufficient learning opportunities available for critical skills

• Costs and Catalogue Mix tell you if you are not overpaying for video and eLearning content creation

• Utilization and Data Quality tell you if your poor titles and vague descriptions are causing people to not find or take your training

The possible combinations, and with that the possible insights are endless!

The L&D Health Check

So, we collected the necessary and relevant data from our learning systems on these 5 metrics, across multiple dimensions like employee data and training vendors. How do you decide what parts of your catalogue are in “poor health”?

There are 3 possible scenarios:

• Compare against industry standards:
  You do not really have clear ‘health’ targets. So you do not need to ‘loose weight’, or get your ‘blood pressure’ down. In these cases the health of of your L&D catalog can be compared against L&D best practices and benchmarks. Like health professionals know that a blood pressure reading of 140 over 90 means high blood pressure and should lead to actions to bring it down, we at SLT Consulting know what range of these metrics are acceptable and when action is advised.

• Compare against last year:

  A second means of establishing the health of your L&D catalogue when you do not have clear targets, is to look at how each metric evolves over time. also known as trend analysis. Trend analysis is a very useful way to establish if metrics are moving in the right direction. In the same way that a regular check of your body weight will tell you if you are gaining or loosing weight. This means that even without having clear targets you can assess the health of your L&D catalogue and take action in those areas that show the wrong trendline!.

• Aim to be an Olympic Gold Medalist!

  The final scenario is the most valuable and most sophisticated one: It’s when you have very specific targets and well defined targets in the context of your vision and strategy. Think how athletes training for the Olympics set carefully set highly personalized health targets depending on the sport they are performing in, their own physique and their level of ambition. No 2 athletes have the same targets, because the percentage fat of a wrestler is considerable different compared to a marathon runner! Likewise, if you have a clear L&D strategy (see my previous special edition newsletter for inspiration!) or even better, you have translated your strategy to what that means for your catalogue of L&D assets you can measure and track the health of your L&C catalogue even more accurate. This scenario will allows you to tailor each metric to your exact ‘personal’ targets and establish the health of your L&D catalogue meticulously.

The Choices: Clean, Build, Improve or Communicate

With the 3 scenarios from above, you can start to get a feel of where things in your L&D Catalogue might not be as healthy as you would like. We see indicators that something is not performing properly. It’s in “poor health”.

What then? Because a health check only has value if and when you actually take actions to improve the area’s of poor health.

• Clean
  If certain assets are underused or outdated, or really expensive. And they do not cover critical or strategic topics and skills, it might be time to retire them. This is akin to cutting out unhealthy foods from your diet and stopping with other unhealthy habits, making your catalogue more lean and effective.

• Expand

  While cleaning your catalogue in one place, you might want to consider expanding your catalogue in other places. This is relevant when you are lacking sufficient and adequate learning opportunities in specific topics, skills, modalities and languages.

• Improve

  Underused or very expensive assets that do cover critical or strategic topics and skills, should be identified for ‘continuous improvement’. Maybe employees cannot find them due to vague titles and descriptions? Maybe they drop out because of a lack of context? Maybe because your videos are way too long? In principle you need these assets, so you should not get rid of them, but they need work as they are not reaching their potential! This is like improving specific routines that you cannot drop, but turning them into an opportunity to improve your health: Taking the stairs rather than the elevator, or walk instead of taking an Uber.

• Communicate
  Conversely, if you have valuable content that isn’t reaching its intended audience and is the right quality, it could be time to improve communication and promotion. Make sure the right employees know where to find these resources and how they will help them.

Ask yourself: “Is low engagement due to irrelevance, or simply because people aren’t aware of the asset?” Your answer will guide you on whether to clean up or amplify your message, or perhaps do a bit of both.

Your L&D Health Is In Your Hands!

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.

A healthy L&D catalogue is about crafting learning experiences that drive real performance. By routinely checking your catalogue’s “vital signs” and acting on them, you can ensure that your workforce stays current, engaged, and ready for the challenges ahead.

I’d love to hear from you. What challenges are you facing with your learning catalogue? Drop me a reply and let’s discuss how to clean up and communicate your way to a healthier L&D.

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