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

Measuring how training participation influences promotion rates

Training participation is often reported as a success measure: how many employees attended, completed a module or passed an assessment. Promotion rates provide a more meaningful test. They show whether learning is associated with increased responsibility, stronger capability and progression into more senior roles.

The relationship is rarely straightforward. Employees who volunteer for development may already be ambitious, supported by their manager or working in teams with better career pathways. A useful analysis must separate those influences from the effect of training itself and connect learning records with workforce outcomes.

For Australian employers, this work is especially relevant across dispersed workforces, regulated industries and hybrid teams. A mining company with FIFO employees, a government department in Canberra and a retailer operating across Sydney, Perth and regional Queensland will each define participation, readiness and promotion differently.

Define the promotion outcome clearly

“Promotion” can mean movement to a higher pay grade, appointment to a supervisory role, an internal transfer with greater accountability or progression through a formal career framework. Before collecting data, specify which event is being measured and the period in which it must occur.

A practical measure is the promotion rate among eligible participants within 12 or 24 months of completing training. The comparison group should contain employees who were eligible for the same opportunity but did not participate. Eligibility matters because comparing a frontline worker with an executive program participant will produce a distorted result.

Record lateral moves, acting appointments and salary-band changes separately. In some Australian organisations, an employee may take on team leadership responsibilities without receiving a formal title change, while enterprise agreements or public-sector classifications may determine when a role counts as a promotion.

Connect learning records with workforce data

A reliable analysis requires a shared employee identifier across the learning management system, HR information system and performance platform. Useful fields include course enrolment, attendance, completion, assessment results, manager, location, job family, tenure, performance rating and promotion date.

Participation should be measured at several levels. Attendance indicates exposure, completion shows persistence, and demonstrated application gives stronger evidence of capability. A person who attended a two-hour workshop in Melbourne has had a different learning experience from someone who completed practice activities, received coaching and applied the skill on a project.

Consistency also affects the validity of the comparison. When branches or departments receive different facilitators, materials or manager support, the data may reflect delivery variation rather than the value of the program. Organisations can review consistent training delivery before interpreting promotion results.

Control for the factors that shape advancement

Promotion decisions are influenced by tenure, current performance, manager advocacy, workforce demand and access to visible projects. Include these variables in the analysis wherever possible. Otherwise, a positive association may simply show that high performers are more likely to attend training and receive promotions.

A cohort design can strengthen the evidence. Match participants with similar non-participants based on role, business unit, prior performance, tenure and location, then compare promotion outcomes over the same period. A logistic regression or survival analysis can estimate whether training participation remains associated with promotion after these factors are controlled.

Timing is important. Training completed shortly before a promotion may have supported readiness, or it may have been assigned because the employee was already earmarked for advancement. Comparing promotion rates before and after training, alongside a similar comparison group, helps expose this reverse-causation problem.

Measure adoption before promotion

Promotion is a lagging indicator. It may take months or years for a capability program to influence a vacancy, selection process or pay review. Add leading indicators such as manager observations, work-sample scores, quality measures, productivity, customer outcomes and use of the target behaviour.

Predictive Evaluation provides a useful framework for forecasting whether learning will be adopted and whether that adoption is likely to produce business value. For example, a leadership program can track whether participants hold regular development conversations, improve team retention or take on acting responsibilities before a formal promotion occurs.

Onboarding deserves particular attention because early performance and career progression are linked. When new employees learn role expectations, feedback processes and career criteria together, the evidence is easier to interpret. An integrated onboarding design can connect initial learning with performance reviews and future progression decisions.

Compare participation patterns fairly

Use rates rather than raw counts. If 40 of 200 participants are promoted and 20 of 200 non-participants are promoted, the rates are 20% and 10%, giving a 10 percentage-point difference and a relative promotion rate of 2.0. Report confidence intervals or statistical significance when the sample is large enough.

Segment the findings by gender, age group, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status where appropriate and lawful, employment type, region, business unit and job level. A program that appears effective overall may benefit office-based employees in Sydney while having little effect for shift workers in regional sites. Small groups should be protected from identification and interpreted cautiously.

Measurement approach	What it shows	Main limitation	Suitable use
Participant versus non-participant rate	Basic association with promotion	Selection bias	Early diagnostic
Matched cohort comparison	Association after balancing key characteristics	Unmeasured differences remain	Program review
Pre- and post-training change	Movement in outcomes over time	Other changes may coincide	Capability tracking
Leading and lagging indicators	Adoption before formal promotion	Requires consistent manager data	Ongoing evaluation

Turn findings into workforce decisions

A useful report should connect the numbers to decisions. If participants progress faster, examine which behaviours, modules and manager practices are associated with that result. If there is no difference, test whether the program lacked application opportunities, whether promotion pathways were restricted or whether the measurement window was too short.

Share findings with HR, learning teams and operational leaders in language that supports action. A regional operations manager may need a simple view of readiness and internal mobility, while an executive team may need evidence about retention, succession risk and return on investment. Australian organisations should also consider award conditions, consultation requirements and transparent promotion processes when changing development pathways.

The final aim is a repeatable evidence cycle: define the outcome, capture participation and adoption, compare fair cohorts, check for unintended gaps, and use the findings to improve learning strategy. Start by linking the last 12 months of learning completions to promotion and role-movement records, then calculate promotion rates for matched participant and non-participant cohorts.

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.