Can You Show the Impact of Your Professional Development Program? Most Can’t.

A recent webinar, “Dollars and Sense: Building a Financial Case on Expanding Professional Development” was attended by leaders from nursing, education, staff development, and more across the nation.

The webinar focused on the importance of professional development programs and the necessity of demonstrating their success to key stakeholders in the organization. Professional development programs are essential in equipping a hospital’s and health system’s workforce with providing high-quality patient care, and are also one of the top recruiting aspects that candidates look for in an employer.

Having them in place is one challenge, but effectively showing the impact of professional development programs on both clinical and financial outcomes can be an added (and often forgotten) challenge.

The webinar discussed how to build a financial case to senior leaders and obtain better support in expanding existing professional development programs.

Significant webinar insights included:

• Key organizational challenges facing professional development leaders
• 3 strategies for demonstrating impact of your professional development program on clinical and quality outcomes
• How to turn these improvements into solid business case arguments for enhanced support for the department
• Best practices for implementing a new business model for professional development

View the webinar slides and recording

Survey Says

Based on live polling during the webinar, results indicate that there is a current awesome opportunity to improve ROI efforts among hospitals and health systems in demonstrating success for professional development programs. Almost 60% of attendees reported not having a current method to calculate ROI for professional development programs, and only half of attendees reported feeling confident in their ability to effectively present results, proposals, and presentations to senior leaders.

Webinar Poll Results

1. Reducing CMS Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) penalties is a priority for me/my department.
   • Strongly Agree: 18.4%
   • Agree: 40.8%
   • Disagree: 36.7%
   • Strongly Disagree: 4.1%

2. My organization tracks VBP closely.
   • Strongly Agree: 29.4%
   • Agree: 52.9%
   • Disagree: 15.7%
   • Strongly Disagree: 2%

3. I am comfortable making proposals/presentations to senior leaders for resources for my department.
   • Strongly Agree: 3.8%
   • Agree: 45.3%
   • Disagree: 18.9%
   • Strongly Disagree: 34%

4. Do you currently have a method of calculating ROI for your professional development program?
   • Yes: 2%
   • No: 58.8%
   • I’m not sure: 39.2%

Tool for Improvement

High-performing organizations recognize the importance of professional development for new and incumbent nurses. To ensure the success of professional development programs, leaders need to be equipped with the necessary tools and resources to demonstrate the ROI and value of their programs to key stakeholders.
This ROI Calculator demonstrates the value of professional development programs by helping to analyze an organization’s:

• Cost Reductions
  • Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Penalties
  • External Training
• Cost Avoidance
  • Course Development
  • Paid Training
  • Orientation