Measuring the return on an investment in training or development is often not attempted on the grounds that it is ‘too difficult’. We have a framework and planning process that maps the expected return on investment, and identifies clear performance metrics for a training or change programme.

This allows our clients to evaluate the positive impact of their training and development and so promote its benefits within the organisation alongside other strategic investments – such as spend on a new IT system.

As part of the ‘Going for Growth’ (G4G) change programme, we helped Allied Domecq Inns (ADI) to develop a set business performance metrics that could be used to evaluate the success of the programme. In addition to improvements in sales, margin, customer satisfaction and staff turnover, we also tracked performance across a wide range of supporting change activity - such as the completion of G4G training courses and adherence to important G4G processes. The performance metrics were reviewed monthly by ADI's top team and helped them keep the change programme on track to deliver significant improvements in sales and customer service.

Alpha Airport Airport Shopping worked with cda to deliver improvements in sales and customer service in their duty free shops in the UK. This change programme - called 'Growing Alpha's People' (GAP) - was evaluated against a range of metrics including % increases in sales penetration, employee retention and customer satisfaction. The GAP programme was regarded as highly successful and subsequently extended to the Alpha Airport Catering and World News businesses.

Alliance UniChem worked with cda to drive customer service and staff morale in their 800 pharmacies around the UK. The success of the project was monitored against a range of performance measures, including staff turnover and unit profitability. The business targeted a specific reduction in turnover amongst qualified pharmacy staff, with a corresponding saving in cover and recruitment costs. They also targeted a % improvement in unit profitability as a result of enhanced customer service skills.

When Barclaycard commissioned cda to develop a change programme that would deliver sustained improvements to customer service skills, they were very clear that they wanted to be able to measure the impact of the programme. This was achieved by aligning the programme with Barclaycard's key business metrics (such as JD Power) and ensuring that Barclaycard's internal measurement processes - such as the Call Monitoring/Coaching process for Call Centre staff were also closely linked to the skills and behaviours developed by the programme. In this way, it was possible to measure the impact of the changes on both day-to-day Adviser performance and customer satisfaction.

When North Lincolnshire Housing Services received a second 'poor' assessment from the Audit Commission, their response was to develop a Recovery and Continuous Improvement Plan, which included an investment in developing the customer service skills of their people. The success of the programme was evaluated against a range of measures, including tenant survey results and tenant complaints, staff survey results and financial performance. They identified significant improvements in customer satisfaction throughout and following the period of the training.

We worked with Toyota GB (TGB) to deliver 'Retail Concept'; a new vision for TGB's 200+ retailers across the UK. The aim of Retail Concept was to deliver an outstanding customer service experience through improvements to the design of Toyota Centres and the skills and behaviour of customer-facing staff. As part of the programme we developed a 'scoreboard' of performance metrics which were used to track the impact of the programme. These identified improvements in customer satisfaction (CES) results in dealerships which had been through the 'Retail Concept' programme.

A simple method to show a direct return on an investment in training is to have the manager or staff member deploy their new skills in a readily identifiable way. In the 'Leading Business Success' programme at Welcome Break the directors nominated strategically important projects for the business for the programme delegates to use as development vehicles. The visibility of these projects was important, as was the opportunity to apply learning in the work environment. These projects provided a useful way to establish the immediate impact of the programme.

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• The proof is in the pudding
  Recruit Magazine (Dec 2003)