Measuring the ROI of Your Learning and Development Program

Demonstrate value through strategic alignment between learning and business goals

Written by Kelly Bailey

Reviewed by Karen Sherrill

Read Time 4 minutes

Understanding ROI to Maximize the Value of L&D

Measuring the ROI of Your Learning and Development Program

Banking and finance roles are rapidly evolving due to technological advances, heightened competition, and increased demands from leadership and customers. Top talent seeks more than just an employer and a steady paycheck. They demand environments that nurture their professional growth, and they don’t hesitate to change employers to get it. Providing ongoing employee learning and development programs are critical for organizations to keep pace and address talent management goals.

With lean L&D budgets, measuring and maximizing program return on investment (ROI) is essential to demonstrating not only program effectiveness but also business value. As a recent Harvard Business Review article highlighted, measuring ROI requires a strategic, data-driven approach that starts with identifying current skills gaps and aligns learning initiatives with strategic business objectives.

Key Highlights

Strategic alignment of L&D programs to business goals and workforce skills gaps is essential for measuring ROI.
Quantifiable metrics across individual, team, and organization levels provide data to demonstrate L&D outcomes.
Conducting cost-benefit analyses over set periods gives full visibility into a program’s ROI.
Optimizing L&D investment based on data-driven insights maximizes the development of critical workforce capabilities.

Assess Skills Gaps to Identify L&D Needs

You can’t measure learning and development progress or ROI without first assessing and collecting baseline data on skills gaps within your team or workforce. Identifying existing skill gaps can determine where to target your L&D programs.

This could involve conducting skills assessments or surveys to gather data on employees’ current skill sets and areas for improvement. Requesting input from people managers and team leaders can give you valuable insights into how individual employees contribute to team or business outcomes.

Aligning L&D Programs to Business Initiatives

Strategically aligning learning and development programs to current business needs and employees’ specific roles ensures the programs deliver direct positive impacts on organizational performance and objectives.

Ultimately, tight alignment between L&D programs and critical business initiatives also allows companies to make the best use of limited training budgets by focusing efforts where they will be most impactful. This strategic investment in employees through aligned L&D contributes to long-term organizational success.

Quantifying Impacts on Finance Performance

Establishing quantifiable L&D metrics at individual, team, and enterprise levels promotes accountability and makes measuring ROI easier. Metrics track learning progress and outcomes across all levels, providing visibility into how L&D impacts capabilities organization-wide.

For example, productivity and error rate metrics before and after financial modeling training would quantify the impact on the finance team’s performance. Comparing data clearly shows whether the training effectively addressed skill gaps and areas for improvement.

Quantifiable metrics provide solid evidence of L&D program impacts, allowing organizations to demonstrate tangible value and ROI to stakeholders. Strategic metrics enable data-driven insights on enhancing workforce skills through impactful learning programs tied to business goals.

Calculating Direct Cost Savings

A key component of demonstrating L&D ROI is quantifying how upskilling programs reduce direct costs. For example, improving your internal capabilities can reduce certain expenses like external hiring or consultant fees that would otherwise fill skills gaps.

Effective L&D also leads to shorter onboarding times for new hires, reducing unproductivity during onboarding and improving time to value. Considering the substantial costs to recruit, onboard, and train new external candidates, filling skill needs internally through well-designed L&D is frequently a far more cost-effective route.

Take the case of Carter Bank & Trust, a commercial lending institution with $4 billion in assets. With CFI’s solution for teams, Carter was able to reduce the length of its new analyst training from one year to six months. This means Carter can deploy skilled analysts into their commercial credit teams much faster, which has translated into operational efficiency.

“CFI’s training solutions have been a game-changer for us,” says Colin Davis, Commercial Credit Director at Carter Bank & Trust. “They have allowed us to fast-track the development of our new hires while providing our existing staff with valuable refreshers and advanced knowledge. This has not only boosted our team’s confidence but has also significantly contributed to our operational success.”

Conducting a Cost-Benefit Analysis

A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis provides the full picture of L&D program ROI. Conduct rigorous financial analysis, tallying all program costs like development, delivery, technology, administration, and employee time. Compare total costs against quantified benefits over time to identify the tangible value gained from the investment. Benefits may include increased productivity, accuracy, faster turnarounds, reduced errors, and stronger capabilities. Assign concrete dollar values to benefits based on data.

For example, training that reduces your budget cycle by one day through process improvement L&D could be valued at $50,000 in productivity gains as measured by periods that suit your organization (monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.). Maintaining positive ROI also requires discontinuing programs that cease to demonstrate meaningful benefits relative to costs.

A Strategic, Data-Driven Approach

Measuring and maximizing ROI on finance L&D requires a strategic approach tightly aligned to business needs and goals. Quantifiable metrics and rigorous data analysis help demonstrate concrete impacts on performance and capabilities. A focus on driving business value should underpin all L&D initiatives. Cost-benefit analysis provides clarity on the return relative to program costs over time.

By leveraging data to choose and optimize high-ROI learning programs, your organization can efficiently elevate your workforce’s banking and finance skills to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Empowering Teams with Structured Finance Training

CFI for Teams is built for finance and banking teams that need to streamline new hire onboarding and upskill or reskill current team members. Our comprehensive training catalog of 250+ courses with 5,000 video lessons and seven accredited certifications lets you tailor learning paths for your team that align with your business goals. You also get detailed progress tracking and performance analytics that help you quantify and demonstrate the impact of training and ROI.

Finance training solutions that support:

CFI for Teams gives finance managers a structured way to assess capability gaps, assign role-based training paths, and track development at the team level.

See How CFI Works for Teams