At a dinner last year, a learning leader asked the guest speaker a simple question: what’s the best measurement model to use? The speaker was a measurement guy. It’s what he does. He simply didn’t answer the question.
The honest answer most of us give is this: the best model is the one you’ll actually use, the one that fits your organization. That’s not wrong, but it sidesteps something, because the models that exist for us in L&D aren’t different flavors of the same thing. They measure different things and mean different things to different people.
We compared what’s out there (because the gap between where L&D is now and where it needs to be is a measurement problem) and looked at four methods: Kirkpatrick, Phillips ROI, LTEM, and Talent Development Reporting Principles (TDRp). Here are the strengths and the weaknesses of each, and what we make of them.
Kirkpatrick
What is the question it asks?
Did the learning work?
What’s great about it?
Kirkpatrick has been the default for decades and almost everyone knows it. Most teams can run its early levels without extra budget or expertise.
What’s the catch?
Kirkpatrick produces no financial figure. Its top level tells you a business result changed. It doesn’t tell you what that change was worth in terms of dollars.
Phillips ROI
What is the question it asks?
Did it create financial value?
What’s great about it?
Phillips is the only classic model that puts a dollar figure on training.
What’s the catch?
Phillips has to prove the training caused the result before it can price it, and proving that takes control groups and estimates. Phillips designed the model for a handful of expensive programs, so it was never built to report on the whole function.
LTEM
What is the question it asks?
Did people learn from and use the training, on the job?
What’s great about it?
LTEM goes much further than Kirkpatrick. It asks whether people can actually do the work the training was for, and whether they still can months later.
What’s the catch?
LTEM tells you how well the learning worked, not what the business impact was from it. This method was never built for a financial conversation.
Talent Development Reporting Principles (TDRp)
What is the question it asks?
How do we report and manage L&D like a business?
What’s great about it?
TDRp is a public standard, and a thorough one. It covers your whole function, and it structures L&D reporting the way finance structures company accounts.
What’s the catch?
TDRp is heavy. It runs to more than 500 measures, and it assumes your team is already measuring well. When it reaches business impact, it runs into the same problem Phillips does — causal isolation. You have to prove the training caused the result.
Introducing a new method
Looking across the four methods above, the same thing is missing from all of them. Three answer questions about learning, which is what – and who – they were built for. Only Phillips reaches a dollar figure, and it gets there by proving the training directly caused the result. That’s the hardest thing to do in our field, and it’s why so few teams finish one.
So we went and talked to learning leaders about it, and together we built FRAME — a new method for reporting L&D in both business and financial terms. With it you can literally run L&D like a business. It gives you the evidence to decide where to invest and what to stop, and the numbers, quarter by quarter, to show what return the business has for money spent.
FRAME starts with your L&D strategy and ends with your FOAP (aka “Fiscal on a Page”).
Your FOAP is a one-page financial statement for your learning function: what you spent on each initiative against what the business got back, which gives you your investment efficiency.
Why is FOAP important? Because every other function in the business reports on a page. Finance has statements. Sales has its numbers. L&D often shows up with a deck full of metrics, including ones that only matter to learning (think: completion rates and satisfaction scores). We don’t help ourselves. The one-page constraint isn’t about formatting — it really forces you to decide what actually matters, and it means the business will consume it.
Here’s how FRAME compares to the methods described above:
FRAME
What is the question it asks?
How do we report L&D in both business and financial terms?
What’s great about it?
FRAME reaches a dollar figure, which Kirkpatrick and LTEM never do. It gets there without Phillips’ control groups, because FRAME reports what was spent and what the business saw over the same period. It makes no causal claim so it avoids you having to defend the numbers.
FRAME is lighter than TDRp by design, because it doesn’t ask you to stand up a full reporting system first. Both use the term ‘efficiency’ but they mean different things by it. TDRp means operational efficiency: how many, at what cost. Uniquely, FRAME looks at investment efficiency: what the business saw against what you spent.
What’s the catch?
FRAME only works if you set it up before the program runs, and the data sits with the people who own those numbers, who have to agree to share them. Where a number doesn’t exist yet, or L&D has trouble procuring it, you can start with a proxy or a leading indicator. The setup is the real work for this method.
If you want to see what FRAME looks like against your strategy, grab some time with us.
