For as long as I have been in the HRD profession ROI has been the "holy grail" of training evaluation.  Unfortunately, an effective AND practical method has been elusive.  Despite literally decades of promoting it, the fact is ROI is rarely calculated for training investments.

Debate has swirled for years about how best to calculate ROI.  Evaluation purists have developed effective methods, but they are mostly impractical for all but the biggest training initiatives.  The methods promoted by purists tend to be costly in either time and staff resources, or money for consultants.

On the other side are "quick and dirty" methods which lack validity but are easy to implement. These methods have proved unsatisfying because the results just aren't credible.

So do we just give up?  Is ROI simply unattainable or even ill-advised as some suggest?  I say no, we can do it and we should. The fact remains that ROI is the universal language of organizations, particularly private sector organizations.  And, if we want resources spent on training to be viewed as investments--which they are--then we HAVE to at least estimate ROI.

Fortunately there is a practical and economical way to estimate ROI.  Largely overlooked has been a technique advocated for over 60 years by industrial-organizational psychologists called utility analysis.   The list of researchers advocating utility analysis reads like a "Who's Who" of I/O psychology with Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau (2011) being the most current and well-known advocates but with much of the research foundation built by the renowned John Hunter and Frank Schmidt .  Thus, it has deep and well-researched roots that have demonstrated its validity.  Unfortunately it has not been adopted by practitioners because they mistakenly see the statistics involved as too complex.

Now TransferLogixTM from Learning Transfer Solutions Global has implemented this evidence-based approach so that it is "doable" by every organization for every training program.  TransferLogixTM  demystifies utility analysis so ROI can truly be the benchmark for every training program and become part of the daily lexicon for human resource development.

Utility analysis has been seen sometimes as "too good to be true" but it really is a carefully researched and effective technique .  While I would never argue that these estimates are better than a carefully conducted custom study, I (and others) do argue that the ROI metrics produced by utility analysis have a high level of validity.  Because they can be easily calculated for EVERY training program-which is not true of custom studies-they are a superior approach to making sound decisions about development interventions.  

Check it out.