By Jack Price
Demonstrating value in learning isn’t just about sharing a few metrics. It’s about telling a story that shows what changed and why it mattered.
Every learning program is a story in progress. It begins with a challenge, moves through moments of discovery and ends with transformation. When we approach ROI as storytelling, we shift our focus from data alone to the narrative that gives those data points meaning.
In my experience leading learning design at a microlearning platform, the most powerful evidence of impact comes from stories that connect people, performance and purpose. When we tell that story clearly, we move beyond reporting figures. We demonstrate growth, behaviour change and real business results.
To tell that story well, we need to understand our audience, gather the right data and shape it into a narrative that demonstrates learning ROI with clarity and purpose.
Understanding Your Audience
Every story needs its audience. When we’re telling the story of learning, our stakeholders are our audience. Each one defines value differently, and all deserve a voice in how success is measured.
Learners are often forgotten in ROI conversations. We focus on business outcomes and overlook the learner’s perspective, even though they’re the protagonists of the story. Learners care about relevance and usefulness. If the training doesn’t help them in their work or give them the confidence to do their jobs better, it has no value.
Subject matter experts want evidence that their expertise has landed and is being applied. Seeing uplift in quiz results or improved accuracy in the field tells them their part of the story mattered.
For project owners and sponsors, success often means a wide reach and high levels of participation. They want to know that training was delivered effectively and met expectations.
Executives look for a bigger arc, connecting learning to business outcomes like sales, productivity or safety.
Recognising these perspectives helps us understand the details and the data we’ll need to tell our story and make it land.
The Challenges of Telling the ROI Story
Telling a meaningful story isn’t just about understanding the audience. We need the plot itself, the data, and we need to use that data to form a coherent narrative. Doing this well means we can successfully communicate the journey our learners go on to our stakeholders. But there are some key challenges when it comes to measuring and communicating data:
The Data Challenge
Without the right data, it’s hard to tell a convincing story. We need concrete proof points to support our claims. Sometimes learner engagement or performance isn’t tracked effectively. Other times we focus on learning metrics but forget about the metrics the business values. We might sense that change has happened but struggle to quantify it. When data is missing or incomplete, our story loses credibility.
The Narrative Challenge
Even when we do have data, the challenge is using it well. We collect learning and business data but fail to connect the two. The cause and effect remain unclear. Or we gather so much information that the message becomes muddy. Without a narrative structure, our story feels disjointed and the impact gets lost.
These challenges make it difficult to tell a coherent and convincing story about learning impact. They stop us from demonstrating value in a way that moves people to believe in what learning can achieve.
Three Simple Tips to Tell a Compelling ROI Story
To prove ROI, we need to think about the story we want to tell from the very beginning. Like an author planning a novel, we decide what the ending will be and work backward from there.
Design with the End of the Story in Mind
As soon as we start designing training, we’re already writing the story of learning ROI. This means defining what success looks like from the very beginning. What will the happy ending be?
I start projects with a mind-mapping session that brings together key stakeholders. I ask questions about desired business goals, behaviour change and knowledge transfer to identify the data points I’ll need to tell a convincing story for each stakeholder:
- What do they want learners to know, feel or do differently?
- What results would make them proud to share the story later?
- What will convince them we’ve succeeded?
Once you know the ending, work backward. Identify the scenes that lead there. The activities, messages and experiences that will drive change. This keeps the story focused and consistent from design through delivery.
Measure What Matters to the Story
Once the ending is clear, we can identify the proof points that will make the story convincing. The goal isn’t to collect every possible metric, but to focus on the ones that will strengthen our narrative.
These are some effective approaches I’ve used to capture relevant data:
- Quiz-based learning introduces and reinforces knowledge while generating useful data on learner performance and understanding.
- Pre- and post-training confidence surveys reveal how learners feel about their abilities. They prompt self-reflection and show subject matter experts that their expertise is being transmitted.
- Qualitative learner feedback provides the human element that makes hard data more relatable and concrete.
When it’s time to tell the story, combine learning results, learner sentiment and business metrics to create a full picture of transformation that more convincingly communicates value and ROI.
Communicate with Structure
At the end of a project, it’s time to write the story, take our data and shape it into a clear narrative.
One way to structure this narrative is in three acts:
- Act One: Using baseline data, pre-training surveys and the insights from our mind map, we can paint a picture of where the project began. The aim here is to set the stage for the transformation that will come in Act Three.
- Act Two: The details of the journey are a key part of any story. We want to describe the training learners completed, and draw on qualitative feedback to create a complete picture of the learner experience.
- Act Three: The end point is the most important part of the story of learning ROI. This is our moment to return to the starting data and show how it changed as a direct result of the learning, highlighting achievements as well as opportunities for growth.
Throughout, keep the story simple, focusing on the transformation and a clear before-and-after comparison rather than a list of figures.
We also want to consider our audience. Which stakeholders are we telling the story to? Executives want a concise overview. Sponsors want to understand engagement and sentiment. Subject matter experts want proof of knowledge transfer. Learners want to reflect on their progress. Tell each version in a way that speaks to what the audience values.
Finally, close the loop. Share what we learnt and how it will shape the next project. Each story becomes the foundation for the next chapter of improvement.
Demonstrating learning ROI is about telling a complete story of transformation. When we design with the end in mind, measure what truly matters and communicate results with structure and intention, we show how learning changes people and performance. Data and metrics are the evidence, but the story gives them meaning. By crafting that story deliberately from the first idea to the final result, we move beyond proving value and truly demonstrate it with clarity and purpose.
About the Author: Jack Price
Jack is the co-leader of the Customer Success team and Head of Learning Design at microlearning platform Yarno. He was a Linguistics major at university and worked as an English Language Teacher prior to entering the L&D industry.
