I am in the process of trying to calculate the ROI for our Career Plan program and am looking for feedback on the process others have in place. Such as do you look for the percentage of completed tasks for each individual in the career development program or do you have another process in place to validate the success of the program and those in the High Prospect pool?

Linda,

Help me understand what you are asking. Are you wanting to calculate ROI regarding Succession Planning (meaning you are providing development for employees that will allow them to grow into other jobs - up the ladder) or a Personal Job Development program (meaning you are providing development for employees in their current job).

Succession Planning is not my expertise, however I love calculating ROI. Since the title is Succession Planning, I will assume you are referring to it.

Off the top of my head I would comapare the costs of development vs. the cost of advertising, recruiting, and hiring someone from the outside. Most specifically, if you have historical data regarding how many internal promotions you have had in your organization then you can quantify with an actual ROI vs. a forecasted ROI.

By taking as you suggested "look for the percentage of completed tasks for each individual in the career development program", you are simply calculating the percent complete of the program. This does not take into account whether it actually helped them or not.

Hope that makes sense.

I did study how to measure succession planning. It is published by VDM Publishing. The book title is "The value of succession planning and management" You can get some information from the book. Or contact me if you want more information about the study and suggested model of measuring ROI of succession planning