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If your working life is like mine, it’s a constant struggle to be efficient and effective in a world that’s always changing. When I talk to clients, I recognise so many of their struggles: stakeholders’ needs changing, new technology bringing new possibilities and new challenges, unknown unknowns emerging from unexpected directions. As learning and development professionals, our lives are certainly never dull.

I also hear one constant theme from my conversations: the need to bring about positive change – to make an impact when enhancing capability for employees. It’s essential for our personal growth as well being critical to the organisations with which we work.

In theory, there are plenty of ways to find a balance between bringing about change and keeping constantly changing balls in the air. In practice, it’s a lot more difficult.  Here are some useful things I have learned during my L&D and HR career.

How can I make a difference when enhancing capability?

So, mindful of the fact that like you, I need my work to make an impact, I spent some time thinking about how I could use my strengths to resolve some of the L&D struggles I hear about. I’ve worked in HR and L&D roles in a range of organisations, and I have years of experience of helping clients with return on investment (ROI). What could I do that would make the biggest impact?

The result of this reflection is my free guide to measuring the financial ROI in your business initiative. I hear time and time again how people – and not just those working in L&D – struggle with this part of their role. After all, not everyone is good at gathering performance data, let alone crunching the numbers they reveal, especially against that background of constant change. But at the same time, we’re all under pressure to show the financial impact of our enhancing capability work.

Free guide to return on investment

My guide walks you through tried-and-tested steps, and signposts you to tools you can use to make the ROI process manageable. You can be confident in the process: it’s based on the one developed by internationally renowned ROI experts Jack and Patti Phillips.

Maximising your time and strengths

Importantly, the guide will save you time, allowing you to focus on juggling your ongoing projects. It tells you what you need to plan for when and who to ask, and it contains templates you can use to gather and work with key information. It’s suitable for organisations of all sizes and from all industries, and best of all, it’s free.

How you can make an impact with elearning when it comes to enhancing capability

There’s another way I wanted to use my experience, and my conversations with clients, to make a difference. Plenty of people have told me how they struggle to create elearning that’s effective, especially when time, budget and subject matter expert engagement are limited.

So, I put together some simple guidance on creating elearning that focuses on bringing about change. You can read it in the August/September edition of Employment Today magazine.

Like my ROI guide, it’s designed for busy people who need to make a difference, and it walks you through a step-by-step process that focuses on business needs. It also looks into common problems that elearning designers face and offers solutions that allow you to move on instead of wasting time exploring dead ends.

Working together

Like you, I’m passionate about making a difference. Once you’ve downloaded my guides and put them into action, let me know what other enhancing capability struggles you face as an L&D expert. Drop me a line or use the comments field to share your pain – we can find a way to fix it together.

In the meantime, please feel free to download our ROI eBook on measuring the financial return of your programmes.