Is Learning and Development´s impact on people that difficult to measure?

Improving a dashboard that requires to improve KPI´s in the learning and development environment, sometimes can dehumanize the process of learning.

Business objectives drives what it is necessary to improve in the organization but sometimes we can commit a mistake not measuring the impact on people. This could seem to be difficult to include into a metrics dashboard. But it is not.

Let´s see an example.

Loyalty understood as engagement is a KPI that can be applied to different situations. Applied to customers, applied to employees, applied to partners.

Understanding the customer as the key element of the company that contributes to increase profit, let´s build this scenario around customer satisfaction.

From a customer-centric focus we can build capabilities and skills, programs and learning initiatives understanding the key needs to deliver the right products and/or services.

We can improve the design process, we can improve the understanding of customer needs, we can improve the process of delivering at the right time, the right solution. That is correct.

So providing the right tools to increase the ability to deliver a better service, could seem to be the right answer. And it is.

But how does the person feel about delivering results? Do we have the ability to understand the difficulties and fears about improving the quality of work without being judged? Is it compatible with measuring improvement?

And I guess this is the moment when a career advisor can provide the best fit. Not only helping to discover the right projection but also to deal with uncomfortable situations in which professionals can´t be able to face specific situations, if the right skills are not improved.

Can a career advisor act as a psychologist when building confidence? I guess it is a matter of building the right relations.

So to integrate concepts like levels of confidence, needs to be measurable. To integrate levels of flexibility is acceptable. To integrate and measure personal growth could be possible. But How?

An answer is measuring the process when it is being built. Is a level of maturity acceptable in an organization, understanding a lifecycle? I guess that the answer is yes.

Identifying the business needs can integrate to identify people´s needs.

The question is how could hierarchical organizations can integrate the idea of measuring the process when it is being built.

Technological companies understand this matters. The IT professionals understand this matters. But would it be possible to integrate this IT mindset in organizations that are driving technological changes? Would it be acceptable? I guess the answer could be yes.