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Six Tips for Calculating ROI

E-Learning is the Best Return on Your Training Investment

Six Tips for Calculating Your ROI

Your budget plays a major role in the determining the training program you provide to your employee for on-going skill development and to meet mandatory training requirements. Savvy human services executives have learned that an investment in e-learning pays big dividends in reducing training costs while increasing employee satisfaction.

Here are some quick tips for calculating your return on investment (ROI) when considering e-learning and how to better assess your training program costs. 

1. Cut Travel and Gas Expenses- Even if you don’t have a separate line item in your budget for training, calculate what the cost of mileage, gas, lodging and meals are for an employee to attend a live training. Live training costs add up if you have employees spread out among multiple locations or if your agency is in a rural setting. 

2. Hours Spent in Trainings- Online training yields a time savings of 35-45% over traditional classroom instruction while obtaining equivalent or better gains in learning retention. If you pay 30 employees to attend a one hour training and the employee’s average hourly rate is $15, then that training will cost you $450 in paid training time.  If this training is shifted online your cost may be reduced by 40%  -  a savings of $180.  Apply this calculation across all the trainings that you provide – new employee orientation, annual mandatory training, in-service, etc. 

3. Loss of Billable Hours- While your staff is attending trainings they lose the opportunity to perform billable services.  Your goal should be for your staff to remain productive while still receiving excellent training. Let's say that the average counselor generates $60 per hour in billable services and has 10 hours per year of mandatory training to complete. If the amount of time spent in the training could be reduced by 40%, as indicated in the statistic above, you can generate an estimated additional $240 per year per counselor by moving the 10 hours of training to an online format.

4. Keeping Your Clinicians Credentialed- Your staff must be credentialed and maintain their professional licenses to be productive. If you currently pay for staff to attend outside CEU training, you can reduce this cost while expanding training opportunities. We provide over 70 new courses per year including video courses direct from the top industry conferences.

5. Cut Administrative Hassle- Your supervisors, managers and training administrators spend countless hours ensuring your staff is compliant with mandated training requirements. You can more efficiently perform the administration and tracking of your training with a web-based learning management system.  This will save you hours of administrative work by easily reporting and tracking your training events. Estimate the number of hours and the cost per hour it takes to currently do this task and reduce it by 50%. 

6. Intangible Benefits- Budgetary issues will determine what you can afford but research shows that high quality staff training is a key in staff satisfaction and retention.  Also client care improves when staff is provided with high quality training on the latest research and information from the experts in their field.  Motivated staff and low turnover rates can also directly impact your bottom line.