How to Create Your L&D Measurement, Analytics and Reporting Strategy

May 25, 2022
4 minutes
David Vance joined #IDIODC May 25.

Building measurement skills is critical for corporate training professionals who seek to align their L&D programs to business outcomes for organizational success.  

Achieving measurement maturity is a change effort requiring commitment and discipline. Understanding your current capabilities and gaps is an essential first step followed by determining where your organization wants to go in this area. Once both are achieved, you will be able to develop your desired measurement and reporting strategy—the bridge between where you are today and where you aspire to be.

David Vance has co-authored “The Measurement Demystified Field Guide” to be that bridge. And he joined IDIODC to discuss how to improve your measurement capability and advance the measurement maturity of your organization. We discussed the talent development reporting principles framework and measurement strategy. Did you even know about the Talent Development Reporting principals (TDRp)? Well, now you do.  And you should learn more.

And even if you don't think you'll ever want to move into management, you'll still benefit as an early career instructional designer or eLearning developer by hearing David's experiences in the world of learning and development.

David founded Caterpillar University back in 2001. Until his retirement in 2007 he was responsible for ensuring that the right education, training and leadership were provided to achieve corporate goals and efficiently meet the learning needs of Caterpillar and dealer employees.  And isn't that what we're all trying to accomplish? Even if you're a learning department of one, you will benefit from rewatching this video.

To see all the comments from the chat, check out the full session right here.  

And to ask more questions, or participate in extended conversations about this episode, please join us in the IDIODC LinkedIn Group.  

About David Vance

David Vance is the Executive Director of the Center for Talent Reporting which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation and implementation of best practices and standards for human capital measurement, reporting, and management. He is the former President of Caterpillar University, which he founded in 2001. Until his retirement in January 2007, he was responsible for ensuring that the right education, training and leadership were provided to achieve corporate goals and efficiently meet the learning needs of Caterpillar and dealer employees. Prior to this position, Dave was Chief Economist and Head of the Business Intelligence Group at Caterpillar Inc. with responsibility for economic outlooks, sales forecasts, market research, competitive analysis and business information systems.  

Dave received his Bachelor of Science Degree in political science from M.I.T. in 1974, a Master of Science Degree in business administration from Indiana University (South Bend) in 1983, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Notre Dame in 1988.  

He was named 2006 Chief Learning Officer (CLO) of the Year by Chief Learning Officer magazine. He also was named 2004 Corporate University Leader of the Year by the International Quality and Productivity Center in their annual CUBIC (Corporate University Best in Class) Awards. Caterpillar was ranked number one in the 2005 ASTD Best Awards and was named Best Overall Corporate University in 2004 by both Corporate University Xchange and the International Quality and Productivity Center.  During his tenure Cat U was also honored with numerous other awards including many in the measurement and alignment arenas.

Dave is a frequent speaker at learning conferences and association meetings. He conducts workshops on measurement & reporting and running learning like a business. He also organizes and hosts the Center for Talent Reporting’s annual conference. Dave teaches in the human capital Ph.D. programs at Bellevue University and the University of Southern Mississippi as well as in the executive education program at George Mason University for Chief Talent Officers. He is a member of Working Group 2 on Metrics for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee on Human Capital. He is also an Intermittent Chief Learning Officer for Defense Acquisition University.

He is the author of The Business of Learning: How to Manage Corporate Training to Improve Your Bottom Line (Second Edition) published in August 2017 and co-author with Peggy Parskey of Measurement Demystified: A Framework for the Measurement, Analytics and Reporting in Learning and Development (2021) and Measurement Demystified Field Guide (2022)

Dave, his wife Barbara, and their two dogs live in Windsor, Colorado, where they moved after retiring from Caterpillar.

About IDIODC

Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee (Affectionately known as IDIODC) is a weekly live videocast and podcast that helps instructional designers with pain points and provides best practices and industry insight.  

Every Wednesday morning at 10am ET hosts Brent Schlenker and Chris Van Wingerden guide us through an upbeat and candid conversation with their guests from the eLearning and training world. The live cast session encourages peers to participate in the chat and share their own personal insight! After airing live, you can catch the learning podcast on all major streams such as Spotify, Apple, and Google Play podcasts, as well as on YouTube.

IDIODC is a Top 40 Hit!

We could have been #1 but chair dancing was not a judged element. But no matter, we are simply happy to be selected. Check out this amazingly short press release: “IDIODC was selected as one of the Top 40 Learning and Development Podcasts on the web.”

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