Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Building a Training Adoption Index to Benchmark Against Industry Peers

Training completion rates rarely tell leaders whether learning has become part of daily work. Employees may attend a session, pass a knowledge check, and still return to familiar habits. A stronger measurement approach tracks whether people use new skills, how consistently they use them, and whether that behavior produces operational value.

A Training Adoption Index creates a repeatable way to measure those signals. It combines participation, application, manager reinforcement, confidence, workflow integration, and business outcomes into a structured score that can be compared across departments, programs, and relevant industry peers.

The goal is not to create a decorative metric. A useful index reveals where adoption is accelerating, where friction is blocking transfer, and which learning investments deserve expansion. It also gives executives a common language for discussing capability development and performance improvement.

Why Adoption Needs Its Own Benchmark

Learning activity and learning adoption are related but distinct. Registration, attendance, and assessment results describe exposure and knowledge. Adoption shows whether employees use the capability in the conditions where performance matters, such as customer conversations, software workflows, safety procedures, or leadership routines.

A benchmark should therefore include leading and lagging indicators. Early measures may include practice completion, confidence, manager coaching, and first-use timing. Later measures can include error reduction, productivity, quality, retention, sales conversion, or customer satisfaction. Separating these stages helps organizations detect weak adoption before business results deteriorate.

Define The Index Before Collecting Data

Start by establishing a clear purpose for the index. An organization comparing sales training across regions may prioritize skill application and pipeline behavior, while a manufacturer evaluating safety learning may emphasize procedure compliance and incident reduction. The framework should reflect the performance problem, not simply the data that happens to be available.

A practical index can use weighted dimensions such as reach, engagement, application, reinforcement, and impact. Each dimension needs a consistent definition, a measurement window, and an agreed data source. For example, “application” might mean completing a required behavior during four observed customer interactions, rather than merely reporting that the behavior feels useful.

Scores should be normalized before comparison. A business with a voluntary learning culture should not be compared directly with one where completion is mandatory. Adjust for audience, role complexity, program format, implementation age, and measurement method so that peer benchmarking reflects genuine performance differences rather than inconsistent conditions.

Build A Comparable Peer Dataset

Industry comparison requires disciplined data governance. Peer data may come from professional associations, external research, learning technology providers, consortiums, or carefully structured benchmarking studies. Before using a figure, document its population, sample size, sector, geography, job families, and collection period.

Internal consistency matters just as much. Use the same survey wording, observation criteria, scoring scale, and reporting cadence across programs. If one business unit measures application after 30 days and another measures it after six months, their adoption scores should not be placed on the same leaderboard without qualification.

Anonymized peer ranges are often more useful than a single average. A median, lower quartile, and upper quartile show whether a program is lagging, typical, or leading. They also reduce the risk of overreacting to an industry average that hides substantial variation.

Turn Metrics Into A Usable Score

A simple model might assign each dimension a score from 0 to 100 and apply weights based on business priorities. The index could then be calculated as the weighted average of those dimensions. Keep the initial version understandable enough that managers can explain what changed and why.

Dimension	Example signal	Typical data source	Benchmark use
Reach	Percentage of target employees engaged	Learning platform and HR data	Shows access and coverage
Application	Demonstrated use of the target behavior	Observation, workflow, or manager check	Indicates transfer to work
Reinforcement	Coaching, practice, or follow-up activity	Manager records and pulse surveys	Indicates durability
Confidence	Self-efficacy tied to a specific task	Post-learning survey	Identifies readiness gaps
Business impact	Change in a relevant performance measure	Operational and financial systems	Connects learning to results

The weighting model should be reviewed periodically. If application predicts performance more strongly than satisfaction, application deserves greater influence. A mature measurement process tests whether index movements correspond with actual operational changes instead of assuming that every component has equal value.

Separate Adoption From Business Impact

Adoption is an important bridge between learning and results, but it is not the same as return on investment. A team can adopt a new process while external demand, technology limitations, or management decisions prevent immediate financial gains. Likewise, business performance can improve for reasons unrelated to training.

This is where impact evaluation adds analytical discipline. Compare trained and untrained groups where possible, establish a baseline, track performance over an appropriate period, and record other factors that may influence the outcome. The index can serve as an early-warning measure while impact analysis examines the broader causal story.

Predictive measures are especially valuable before a program launches. If the expected adoption level is too low to support the desired business outcome, leaders can revise the learning experience, manager enablement, communications, or workflow support before spending further resources.

Use The Index To Improve Program Design

Benchmarking should lead to action, not just reporting. When adoption trails peers, the cause may be unclear content, poor timing, insufficient practice, limited manager involvement, or a process that makes the new behavior difficult to perform. Diagnostic analysis should accompany every score.

Custom learning experiences can address those barriers when they are built around real work. Organizations may combine scenario-based practice, short learning bursts, coaching guides, job aids, and manager reinforcement. A custom training solution can align these elements with the organization’s systems, language, workflows, and performance expectations.

The strongest indexes are designed alongside the intervention. Measurement criteria then influence the learning objectives, practice activities, follow-up, and manager tools from the beginning. This creates a direct connection between what people are expected to learn, what they are expected to do, and how adoption will be assessed.

Make Benchmarking Part Of Governance

An index becomes valuable when it is reviewed at predictable intervals and assigned to accountable owners. A monthly operational view may focus on early adoption signals, while a quarterly executive review examines peer position, impact trends, and investment decisions. Different audiences need different levels of detail, but they should work from the same definitions.

Use adoption dashboards to display movement by cohort, location, role, manager, and program stage. Include confidence ranges, sample sizes, and explanatory notes so stakeholders do not mistake a small fluctuation for a meaningful trend.

Set a baseline before delivery begins.
Establish peer groups with comparable populations and conditions.
Review index components separately before changing the total score.
Link low adoption results to specific design or management interventions.
Recalculate benchmarks when business conditions or measurement methods change.

A Training Adoption Index gives learning leaders a practical way to move from activity reporting to performance management. Begin with one priority program, define its critical behaviors, establish a credible baseline, and compare results against a carefully matched peer set. Then use the findings to refine learning design, strengthen reinforcement, and demonstrate how capability development contributes to business performance.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.