Why is ROE Important?
When used correctly, Return on expectations (ROE) depicts the value of training in the terms desired by the stakeholders. For this reason, ROE is refining the learning and development industry at a fast pace. If you’re wondering how it works then, ROE is designed and executed in partnership with the people who will determine learning’s value.

For this purpose, it is vital for the training professional to find out how valuable the initiative is to the organisation and gather an idea of the resources that can be allotted to it. An alignment between the level of effort and the importance of the initiative to the progress of the organisation is highly critical.

A training professional has a better chance of cost-effectively accomplishing the end result if he has complete clarity of the desired outcome. Therefore, it is aptly said that the value of training is visible before the program even begins. One of the biggest and most common mistakes training professionals make is establishing the desired results at the level of training instead of relating training to the achievement of the business goals. Here are some common examples of outcome-based results:

• Profitability
• Sales
• Employee Retention

How to Use ROE to Develop Better Training Programs?
Wastage of training happens when training that isn’t needed is conducted, and the needed solution or training that would’ve helped is not even identified. When employees ask for new training, many learning professionals start designing and creating appropriate programs for them. Often, a training needs assessment is conducted, but rarely are critical performance and business needs ever looked into.

For training to be successful, it is important to identify the ultimate result of the program at first. Therefore, the expectations of stakeholders that define the value to be delivered should be defined well in advance. For this purpose, training professionals must speak to the stakeholders about their expectations and understand them in-depth. This is a chance for the training professionals to understand whether the expectations of the stakeholders are realistic to achieve or not. This also allows training professionals to convert unquantified and varied expectations into measurable results. These results then become the targets on which all the training efforts are focused.

Once the expectations have been clarified, training professionals must work with the managers of the participants. Together they should identify the critical behaviours of the participants, which, if performed consistently will drive productivity in the desired area. Only after this process is conducted should a training professional proceed with the traditional identification of learning objectives. Evaluation becomes much easier when the measurement methods, tools, and techniques are defined at the beginning of the training initiative.