How to stand up for your L&D budget

Do you know how to unlock your team's full potential and drive real business impact?

Every business knows L&D is important (thank goodness), but sometimes we in the L&D business find it hard to justify our value and really PROVE that we need decent budgets to deliver great business results.

It's time to take a stand and defend your budget like never before!

It’s not just about checking boxes and meeting targets (although sometimes that’s what it feels like the business expects of us); it's about unlocking your team’s full potential and driving real business impact.

With the right strategies, metrics, and tools, you can demonstrate the value of L&D in a way that simply can't be ignored.

At Mint, we know that people are the most valuable asset an organisation has, so here’s 5 tips that enable you to demonstrate the impact your L&D programmes have and secure the budget you need to deliver results CEOs, CFOs, COOs (and any other C-Suite people!) demand.

1. Align your L&D strategy with organisational objectives.

Before you start designing anything, think about what outcomes you want to achieve:

• What clearly defined business problems will you solve?

• How will your programmes help the company achieve its goals?

• Does your intervention deliver a tangible return – if so, how do you prove it?

You should communicate with other teams within the business and explore opportunities to collaborate.

If your outcomes don't tie into organisational strategy, you might struggle to demonstrate tangible value.

2. Remind them of their greatest assets – their people!

As the backbone of any growing organisation, L&D is crucial for retaining and developing current talent, especially during challenging economic times.

In fact, professional development is so highly valued by employees that a staggering 94% of them would stay longer at a company that prioritises their growth (Source: LinkedIn Learning).

By positioning effective L&D as a powerful tool for reducing turnover and supporting businesses in maintaining stability, your department can make a smart play – as long as you can prove it!

Investing in the development of existing employees is much more cost-effective than hiring new ones, so demonstrate how your training saves the business money and stress by reducing employee churn and re-hire costs

3. Speak the language of your organisation.

Let's acknowledge that L&D can be a bit of a nebulous concept to those who aren't directly involved in it! A wide range of activities, from face-to-face training sessions, digital learning to coaching and mentoring programmes means it's not always easy for others to understand exactly what we do!

When you're presenting your results or maybe making a case for more funding, talk about how your work impacts the bottom-line – after all, most businesses are about profitability, so how does L&D deliver that?

Explain how we help employees perform better in their role, and what that means for measurable outcomes like productivity, sales or retention.

If you’re supporting the overall vision and mission of the company, you need to be able to explain and evidence how.

4. Use data to prove impact.

While tracking metrics such as the number of courses and completions can be useful, we know that’s not really enough to prove the value of a learning intervention.

Instead, it's critical to measure something tangible (and preferably something that either makes money, or saves money!) – without it, how will the C-Suite know L&D is driving the business forward?

For example, imagine a customer service training program designed to teach support staff how to apply a drill-down questioning process to quickly and accurately identify problems. In order to demonstrate the programmes value to leadership, it's important to track two key metrics:

Behaviour: After completing the training, what percentage of support staff were able to effectively apply the questioning process? This data could potentially be collected through call recordings, or manager feedback spaced over time to ensure the learning has ‘stuck’.

Impact: Did the observed changes in behaviour lead to improved customer satisfaction scores? Was there a marked reduction in complaints, or an increase in service sales (and what is the value to the business for those things)?

By demonstrating a positive return, you can show that your L&D programmes are not just a cost to the business, but an investment that delivers demonstrable profit or savings.

5. Partner with an organisation who can help you prove your learning achieves effective outcomes.

Ok, so this one is a bit cheeky (and a bit ‘self-promotey’), but hear us out…

Right now things are pretty challenging for L&D budgets, which means businesses are carefully examining their budgets and project approval processes are getting trickier.

It's more important than ever for organisations to know whether their learning is truly effective, so you’re going to need to justify yourself!

If you’re not sure your hard work is actually delivering the best results for your business, and you’re worried that important things are slipping through the cracks… you might need someone in your corner to support (hint-hint)

We partner with teams to design learning solutions that deliver results that are measurable and tangible.

Learn more about Mint 360 here.