Soft Skill Training ROI: What’s the Reality? Presented by Teresa Marie for Northern New Mexico HR Association January 2014

Teresa Marie is a leadership coach, speaker and trainer who is passionate about transformation in the workplace. The principal of Positive Results, Teresa has spent 15 years supporting talented employees on how to improve their soft skills so they can accomplish the hard results of today’s business environment.   Teresa has a Master’s degree in Organizational Management from John F. Kennedy University. She was a 2012 Tedx Albuquerque Speaker.

Definition of Soft Skill Guisti (2007) divided soft skills into two areas: interpersonal skills and advanced soft skills. Examples of interpersonal skills are effective communications, leadership, team building and conflict resolution skills. Examples of advanced soft skills are marketing and sales, project management, delegation, public speaking (no data on these two) and time management.

Why Pre-Assess? To see hard results from soft skill training, start with a pre-training assessment. What are the goals of training? 1) What’s on the leader’s wish list? 2) What’s on the employee’s wish list?

Necessary Components of Soft Skill Training Actual problems addressed in training with actual examples of solutions Role play scenarios with genuine problems and participants solve in front of other participants

Sample Role Play You (Dwight) are the director of ___department at ___ company. Susan, the director of ___department is ALWAYS telling you how to do your job! She comes by weekly and asks if she can meet with you to discuss some concerns she has with how your department is handling things. She makes “suggestions” for how your people could do their work differently so as to be more helpful to the people in her department! Frankly, you find her a pain in the ___! You feel that the problems her department experiences from your people are just normal problems she has to deal with as a director. You feel you are constantly cleaning up other department’s problems because of how they affect your employees work, but you don’t go whining to the other directors about how they should run their department! While you find Susan nice, you also think she is interfering and meddlesome.  

Sample Role Play Susan is at her wits end. She has gone to talk with Dwight on several occasions about the ineffectiveness of his staff. Dwight’s staff continues to make the same mistakes day after day, week after week, and now, month after month! Susan has tried to help him with solutions to these problems; she has even offered her employees’ time to work with Dwight’s staff on repetitive problems. Ineffectiveness on Dwight’s department’s part causes stressful urgent situations on her department’s part! Susan is tired of Dwight telling her he will talk with his staff about her concerns. Susan feels Dwight only says this to pacify her. Susan is starting to believe that Dwight isn’t really having those conversations with his staff, or if he is, they certainly aren’t sinking in! While Dwight is always pleasant to Susan, Susan feels Dwight is more talk than action!

Sample Role Play Your responsibility is to come up with a solution that resolves the situation for both Susan and Dwight. Both people need to be part of the solution as both are part of the problem. First determine how your group would solve this situation.  Second, pick someone from your group to be Susan and someone to be Dwight. Be prepared to act out the back and forth discussion you went through to solve the problem, show the conflict resolving conversation between both directors to the group at large.   At any time group members may trade positions with the two people speaking. This is a team effort, and you must as a team decide what to do to help each other out in the discussion.

Commitment is Crucial At the end of training participants commit in writing and explain to the group verbally what one thing they will be accountable for, who they will report back to, and at what intervals.

Final Step Written commitments are added to performance evaluations and participants are evaluated on accountable behaviors.

Why All This Effort? Typical didactic training creates 10% improved behavioral change after 30 days. Typical training with role play practice creates 20% improved behavioral change after 30 days. Training with accountable commitments with follow up for eight months creates 65% improvement in behavioral change. Training with all the above and tied to performance evaluations creates 85% improvement in behavioral change in 8 mos.

ROI Facts on Soft Skill Training Average ROI on soft skill training is 7%-50% When completed in the format discussed, the ROI average is 290%. Specifics: Based on study group of 467 organizations worldwide (226 U.S. companies) Behavioral change reported at 30 day intervals from 30 - 360 days.

ROI Hard Facts on Soft Skills Average ROI Team Building 125% Communication 336% Leadership 370% Conflict Resolution 400% Sales 90% Project Management 501% Time Management 215%

Teach me and I remember. “Tell me and I forget. Involve me and I learn”. - L.M. Montgomery Canadian Author

Sources Barrett, A and O'Connell, PJ (April 2011). Does Training Generally Work? The Returns to In-Company Training. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 54(3), pp 647-662. Bartel, AP (July 2011). Measuring the Employer's Return on Investments in Training: Evidence from Literature. Industrial Relations, 39(3), pp 502-524. The Human Capital Return on Investment from Global Learning Alliance (in association with Knowledge Advisors) http://www.glaworld.com/documents/2F1D3F14-1968-4539-9DC1213B0B4DB724/Human%20Capital%20ROI.pdf How to Maximize the ROI of Learning by Dean Spitzer, IBM http://www.ibmweblectureservices.ihost.com/servlet/Gate/Component?action=load&customer=ibm&offering=sngl&itemCode=ltu2153f The Bottom Line on ROI – The Jack Phillips Approach (Canadian Learning Journal Vol. 7 No. 1, Spring 2009) http://www.learningdesigns.com/page_images/LDOArticleBottomLineonROI.pdf Jay Cross “A Fresh Look at ROI”, ASTD Learning Circuits online magazine http://www.learningcircuits.org/2011/jan2011/cross.htm Jack Phillips - Return on Investment in training and performance improvement programs (ISBN 0-88415-492-0) Jack Phillips - HRD Trends Worldwide – Shared Solutions to Compete in a global economy (Chapter 9) (ISBN 0-88415-356-8) Chartered Institute of Personnel (2008) Learning and Development Annual Surveyhttp://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/research/

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