Time Warner Cable Uses Metrics that Matter™ to Quantify the ROI of a Major Leadership Initiative
Company Overview: Time Warner Cable’s Raleigh Division is based in Morrisville, North Carolina and employs approximately 1,700 people. The service area covers most of Central North Carolina and has over 500,000 subscribers of digital video, high speed data, and voice over internet protocol (VOIP) digital phone service.
Description of Learning Program:In response to a request from one of the directors in Time Warner Cable’s Raleigh Division, a leadership development workshop was conducted for the nine directors who accepted the invitation to attend. The directors who attended were from sales, marketing, collections, commercial services, finance, network operations center, and construction. The program delivered was Franklin Covey’s 4 Roles of Leadership. It was a two-day workshop with a week between the two sessions. Pre-work included choosing a real project or initiative to work on during and after the workshop. Individual coaching was offered to all participants and four accepted.
Measurement Approach: A return on investment (ROI) impact study was conducted for this program because of its high level content, visibility, and participants. Using the ROI Methodology™ developed by Dr. Jack Phillips the organization developed objectives, gathered data, and evaluated results in five levels of learning; reaction / satisfaction / planned action, learning, application, business impact, and return on investment.
KnowledgeAdvisors Metrics that Matter™ learning analytics technology and its Human Capital Return on Investment tool was used to facilitate the process of collecting, storing, processing and reporting the metrics.
Metrics that Matter™ asked the participant to rate the experience in seven areas; instructor, environment, courseware, learning effectiveness, job impact, business results, and return on investment. These data gave the organization the Levels 1(reaction, satisfaction, and planned action) and 2 (learning) measures.
Sixty days after the workshop, a follow-up questionnaire was sent via email to the participants. This tool gathered information that measures Levels 3 (application, implementation) and 4 (business impact). The categories of items in the questionnaire are learning effectiveness, job impact, business results, support tools, return on investment, and feedback on how the organization can improve the training to make it more relevant.
Measurement Obstacles:There were very few measurement obstacles. Stressing the importance and visibility of the program was a best practice in ensuring the participants provided objective and timely feedback about the program and its impact on their jobs.
Measurement Successes: The program was designed to improve productivity. Based on analysis of data, productivity was improved by 38% but the program specifically improved productivity by 14% as other factors beyond the training accounted for the other portion o the improvement. The measurement analysis also indicated that 86% of program attendees had significantly improved quality and employee satisfaction. Taking into account the costs of the program and the value of the performance improvements, the analysis showed an 825% ROI and a payback period of 1.3 months. The program is being expanded because of the high benefit to low cost ratio.
Note: This impact study was performed by Mr. Kirk Smith of Time Warner Cable. KnowledgeAdvisors thanks Mr. Smith for his contributions to this case.