As the workforce continues to change and employees look to close their skill gaps, L&D leaders are presented with an unprecedented opportunity for impact. If implemented effectively, learning and development programs can help guide and support employees as well as drive business growth.
However, these strategies are nuanced, complex, and can vary dramatically between organizations, making it difficult to assign hard ROI on L&D efforts. So how can you show the impact of your strategy?
There is often disagreement about how to assess efficacy. Executives frequently look for visible and structural results, while many L&D leaders pay more attention to factors like knowledge retention, course completion, and satisfaction surveys— learning.
The truth is, all of these factors are crucial in assessing the value of your company’s L&D platform. It just comes down to identifying the right factors for your company and monitoring engagement from your workforce.
That is exactly what Tenaris was able to do after one year of using Degreed. They started by benchmarking their current strategy, developing a new and modernized platform, building a seamless implementation plan, and they were able to quantify their results.
Those results are in: after just 11 months of using Degreed, Tenaris saw an ROI of 119%. They’ve calculated their cost-benefit ratio at 1:2.7.
Tenaris is a massive global company, with over 23,000 employees spread across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Romania, Saudi Arabia, and the US. Before adopting Degreed, their training plans were around 400-800 hours of content, taking employees years to complete. After their adoption, they were able to shift to a user-centered approach that proved to be more efficient and offered a comprehensive model for content. Here’s how they came to their numbers.
What Factors Tenaris Considered When Assessing the ROI of L&D
ROI factors can vary depending on strategy, the size of your company, investment in implementation, and more. Here’s an example of what Tenaris assessed:
- The initial costs of software
- Cost of personnel and professional services
- Time spent /saved in user training and implementation
Tenaris examined these factors over a three-year period to quantify their total investment in Degreed. Direct and indirect benefits were also quantified over the three-year period.
Direct Benefit:
Cost savings realized from lower hourly training costs.
Indirect Benefit:
Increased employee productivity in that employees are responsible for their own training.
After evaluating both direct and indirect benefits, one of the factors Tenaris identified as being most impactful was time saved during training. They looked at both employees who were completing their initial onboarding as well as those switching to new roles within the company.
In fact, Tenaris calculated that Degreed saved more than 15 hours of employee time for new employees and a day and a half for employees moving internally.
Want to learn more about how Tenaris selected, implemented, and assessed their return of investment on Degreed? Download their latest ROI case study here!