LEO Learning, a market leader in global learning strategy, content, and technology, alongside Watershed, experts in learning analytics, measurement, and data analysis, have once again partnered for their sixth annual "Measuring the Business Impact of Learning" survey.

Since launching at the end of 2016, the survey has reached over 1,700 global L&D leaders, providing insight into a range of learning measurement topics, including

• executive pressure to measure the business impact of learning
• budgets, tools, and capabilities
• barriers to effective learning measurement
• L&D department evaluation
• analytics capability within L&D departments
• the impact of big data

Piers Lea, Chief Strategy Officer of LEO and Watershed's parent company, Learning Technologies Group, said, "Last year's survey results echoed the disruption that organizations were - and still are - experiencing globally. In 2020, we saw many organizations focus away from learning measurement in favor of operational resilience. Now that we're turning the corner, it remains to be seen whether L&D will go back on trend in this area.

"The 2020 report data showed that while 94.9% of organizations want to measure the business impact of learning programs, the pandemic has caused 40.6% to focus on operational changes over measurement. Given the emphasis on use of data in all the organizations we work with, we are expecting the results to change quite quickly, but it will be fascinating to see what is happening now."

The survey takes only around five minutes to complete and participants can expect to receive the following:

• immediate access to a Learning Measurement Toolkit, including how-to guides on measurement strategy and implementing learning analytics, as well as last year's report
• a free Learning Record Store (LRS) to start gathering data
• exclusive first access to the resulting research report before it's published in early 2022
• one of three free spots on the “Measuring for Impact” module on our sister company GP Strategies' Measurement Academy
• a teaser of the live results

David Ells, Managing Director of Watershed, said, "While respondents understandably ranked operations over measurement as a priority in the wake of COVID-19, we're increasingly seeing L&D teams shift from thinking of these as separate activities. At Watershed, we're observing that the most successful organizations are using measurement as an immediate feedback loop in the execution of their learning initiatives, rather than just using measurement to look backward on what's happened. We're interested to see how this theme unfolds in the next round of the survey.

"One other data point that stood out last year was the emphasis on learner satisfaction as the key success metric for our respondents, with 30% reporting this as the core measurement of success for their department. Organizations embracing remote work in a post-COVID world are helping drive increased competition in the job market, and we're interested to see if this emphasis on learner satisfaction continues as part of the talent competition theme."

The survey will be open for around one month, with the results report being published in early 2021.