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

Why soft skills training needs hard metrics to survive budget cuts

Communication, collaboration, adaptability and coaching are often treated as nice-to-have because their results arrive through people rather than production lines. Yet most Australian organisations now rely on hybrid teams, digital workflows and managers coordinating distributed staff across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and regional hubs.

During funding reviews, learning leaders face a blunt question: what changed because of the program? Course attendance and satisfaction scores rarely answer it. They show activity and reaction, but not whether workplace behaviour or business performance improved.

The response is not to promise causation from weak data. It is to build a defensible chain from capability to behaviour to operational results, then use that evidence to defend investment. Hard metrics give soft skills training a survival case when budgets tighten.

Start with a business problem, not a learning activity

Each program needs an agreed business decision and a short list of value signals. For example, a frontline coaching initiative might target fewer repeated customer escalations, while manager development might aim to shorten feedback cycles across a regional sales team. This frames the investment around a problem leaders already manage.

Baseline data should be captured before launch, with clear definitions, owners and review dates. A useful guide to manager buy-in strategies explains why involving managers early makes a new learning initiative credible. Managers should help select measures that reflect their work, not receive metrics after the fact.

Measure behaviour before claiming impact

Reaction surveys tell learners whether the session felt useful. Knowledge checks reveal recall. Stronger evidence comes from observable transfer: a manager gives timely feedback, a project team documents decisions, or colleagues resolve conflict without escalation. These signals are closer to the capability the organisation paid to build.

In hybrid Australian workplaces, that evidence can come from short mobile pulse surveys, anonymised Teams meeting observations and team-level delivery data. It should be aggregated by cohort, role and location, with clear privacy thresholds. Individual scoring risks turning development into surveillance and undermining honest participation.

Business measures then test whether the changed behaviour matters. Compare cycle time, rework, escalation rates, client satisfaction or project delivery with a baseline, while noting seasonal and workload effects. If a policy change affects hours, pay or performance, the Fair Work Act 2009 and Fair Work Ombudsman guidance must also inform its implementation.

Turn managers into active adoption multipliers

Learning dies in the gap between workshops and the workday. Managers decide whether feedback is applied, whether new routines are protected and whether peers receive coaching. The ideas in Terry Barber on inspiration reinforce why purpose and human connection matter: a new capability changes only if people see a reason to use it.

In Australia's mixed training market, where TAFE and registered training organisations sit alongside universities and in-house academies, internal credibility carries unusual weight. Managers trust learning when it addresses live constraints such as approvals, staffing and customer demand rather than adding another disconnected course.

Build adoption into the operating rhythm. Give managers a brief team conversation guide, a peer-observation prompt and a monthly use-data dashboard. Track the percentage of teams holding coached conversations, the frequency of desired actions and the number of obstacles escalated. These manager behaviours become leading indicators rather than retrospective anecdotes.

Forecast impact and compare investment choices

Predictive Evaluation applies historical evidence and leading indicators to estimate likely adoption, impact and return before scaling. Dave Basarab Consulting's use of predictive learning evaluation can test which learner groups, managers and implementation conditions are most likely to succeed, allowing resources to be shifted before an expensive rollout stalls.

The numbers should sit beside a clear comparison of options, not become a dashboard nobody reads. Baselines, targets and evidence quality should be visible in the same view:

Signal	Common reporting	Decision-grade alternative
Reach	Registrations	Target roles reached, with completion by cohort
Reaction	Happy sheets	Relevance score tied to an intended workplace action
Transfer	Course confidence	Observed use of the target behaviour at agreed checkpoints
Impact	Anecdotal success	Comparable changes in a named business measure
Value	Cost divided by attendees	Risk-adjusted benefit, delivery cost and forecast ROI

A credible model states uncertainty, names assumptions and shows sensitivity when participation or manager support changes. Return on investment is then a forecast with conditions, not a guaranteed number. This transparency helps finance leaders compare a redesigned program with maintaining the status quo.

Metrics that protect learning investment

A practical scorecard can protect funding by making value visible throughout the learning lifecycle. It should answer four questions: what was expected, what happened, for whom and what happens next.

Tie every program to one business problem and no more than three primary value measures.
Capture a baseline before launch and assign an owner to each measure.
Combine learner feedback with observed workplace behaviour and operational results.
Segment findings by cohort, manager and location to reveal adoption gaps.
Use predictive estimates to compare scale, redesign and stop decisions before spending more.
Report confidence, limitations and costs beside every forecast return.

Executives should remember that positive feedback and completed courses do not prove commercial value. The defensible case for people development rests on current evidence of changed behaviour, credible business outcomes and a transparent forecast of what improved capability can return.

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.