Typically, an investment made in training, especially in enterprises, is made hesitantly or made only if there is a budget that must be spent. As a result, expenditure on training is often considered as a cost. And, the training department is considered a cost center.

One of the reasons for this is that it’s difficult to calculate Return on Investment or ROI from training. Hence, calculating the Payback Period is also challenging. This, in turn, makes it difficult for training managers to prove how the money spent on training development and delivery is adding to the company’s profits.

Because of these challenges, many stakeholders or decision-makers don’t approve the training budget and many courses are never kicked off; although there are people who need the training.

Having metrics such as ROI or Payback Period can give us, training professionals, the data that we need to prove that training expenditures are an investment and not a cost. This information can enable you to speak the same language as the key stakeholders or decision-makers speak at most enterprises, which is of numbers and ROI.

To address this need, we at Check N Click Learning and Technologies have developed this ROI calculator, which lets you calculate ROI and Payback Period for your planned training investment.

Launch the ROI Calculator

Build Your Case

With this tool, you can enter basic information, such as training delivery and development cost and possible performance improvement that your training will induce in your target audience to calculate the ROI.

Help

To use this tool, you need to have some information ready with you, which includes:

  • Training Delivery Cost parameters, such as trainer cost, trainer’s per hour cost, venue cost, etc.
  • Training Development Cost parameters, such as cost associated with the salary of the course developer and graphic designer, amount of time needed to develop your training, etc.

In addition, we’re providing you with two ways to calculate your ROI:

    • Simplified Calculator: You need to provide high-level information that will be used to calculate the ROI and Payback Period.
    • Detailed Calculator: We’ll need more granular information from you to calculate ROI and Payback period, which will result in a more accurate result. The information required includes the frequency of training, trainer cost, participant cost, venue cost, development cost, etc.

Simplified Calculator

Click the Simplified icon if you want to perform a simplified calculation.

Delivery Cost for the Simplified Calculator

This section lets you specify information related to cost of delivery.

  • Total trainer cost per training: Enter the sum of all costs related to the trainer for one training session. It could involve costs before, during and after the training.
  • Total participant cost per training: Enter the sum of all costs that would be incurred when a participant has to undergo a training session. For Example: It could include the time away from the participants’ job, their daily wage multiplied by the hours they will attend the training.
  • Venue cost (if applicable): Input the costs associated with hosting a venue for the training session. It could be a physical or online venue. If it’s an online venue, you can choose to include the subscription fee of your online training tool, so that your costs are calculated more accurately.
  • Total training delivery cost: This will sum up the costs associated with delivering the training. For example, it could involve expenses related to procuring of training material, any ad hoc costs related to the training session itself.

Development Cost for the Simplified Calculator:

Fill in the development cost details if you’ve a team or instructor developing and designing content and presentation for your training.

  • Total development cost for the course (if applicable): Input the sum costs associated with developing the course. This could include efforts incurred by the developer in drafting the content. It could also involve time spent by the designer in designing graphics for the course.
  • Total graphic development cost (if applicable): Enter the cost linked with the time and efforts put in by the graphic development team in developing graphics and so on for the course.
  • Total development cost: This will sum up the overall cost associated with the development of the course. You do not need to enter any value, here.

Detailed Calculator

Click the Detailed icon if you want to perform a detailed calculation.

 Delivery Cost for the Detailed Calculator

This section lets you specify information related to cost of delivery.

  • Trainer cost per hour: Enter the sum of all costs related to the trainer for one training session. It could involve training preparation time as well.
  • Training preparation time in hours: Input the hours spent by the trainer to prepare for the actual training session itself. At times this could also include time spent by other staff acting like a test group for the actual training.
  • Training duration in hours: Input the total time in hours to conduct the training. It could include time spent before the training for registration by the learners. It could also include time spent after the training while gathering feedback from the learners.
  • Trainer travel, food and stay cost (if applicable): Enter the various expenditure the trainer faces when the training is not on premises. This include travel, food, stay and sundry costs that led to the training and back at the company premises.
  • Average participant cost per hour: Enter the average cost per hour that would be incurred when participants have to undergo a training session. It could include the time away from their daily wage multiplied by the hours they will attend the training.
  • Total number of participants: Enter the total number of participants that you estimate will attend the training session.
  • Participant travel, food and stay cost (if applicable): Input the various expenditures the participants will face when attending the training. This include travel, food, stay and sundry costs that led to the training and back at their company premises.
  • Venue cost (if applicable): Input the costs associated with hosting a venue for the training session. It could be a physical or online venue. If it’s an online venue, you can choose to include the subscription fee of your online training tool, so that your costs are calculated more accurately.
  • Frequency of training (Total no of training session): Enter the number of times the raining will be held. It could be a fresher training every six months to gauge the participants’ knowledge retention. It could also be a training held in parts to easily digest the technical information being relayed by the training sessions.
  • Total trainer cost per training: This displays the sum of all costs related to the trainer for one training session. It could involve costs before, during and after the training.
  • Total participant cost per training: This displays the sum of all costs that would be incurred when a participant has to undergo a training session.
  • Total training delivery cost: This will sum up the costs associated with delivering the training. For example, it could involve expenses related to procuring of training material, any ad hoc costs related to the training session itself.

Development Cost for the Detailed Calculator

  • Course developer cost per hour: Type the cost per hour associated with the developer spending time and efforts on developing the course from the start to end of the course.
  • Course development ratio: Enter the estimated time in hours that the developer will take to develop the course. Again, this will involve everything from the planning, development and feedback stages of course development.
  • Graphic designer cost per hour: Enter the cost per hour associated with the graphic designer developing the assets and graphics of the course.
  • Graphic development ratio: Enter the time associated with the graphic designer spending time and efforts on developing the graphics for the course from the start to end of the course.
  • Total development cost for the course: This will sum up the overall cost associated with the development of the course. It could include costs from the planning, implementation and post-implementation phases of course development.

How do we Measure: Simplified Use Cases

Evaluating training performance is the main roadblock in calculating ROI on training investment. So, we are simplifying the uses cases and metrics used for calculating the ROI and Payback Period.

This is because typical training goals relate to improving your audience’s performance that can be measured based on the higher number of units that they produce or the time that they will save after gaining skills from the training. The units can relate to manufacturing, BPOs, or software development. For example, even if you are teaching your team to communicate better, the result will relate to improved communication, which will then influence better quality, time saved, and productivity. Hence, our Use Cases for calculating ROI and Payback Period have been simplified to two measures: Improved Productivity and Time Saved.

Units of Measure

We’ve kept the values that you need to enter as currency agnostic. Whichever value you enter, can be treated as any local or global currency that you want to use.

Feedback

Feel free to send your suggestions and feedback to: lokesh@check-n-click.com.

Disclaimer

Although the calculators take all relevant information necessary to calculate ROI and Payback periods, the results should not be considered 100% accurate. The results generated and calculated are based on assumptions and approximate values that you enter. Hence, the results must be used as a reference and not be considered for any federal or financial reporting.