How to build a business case for a communication skills training programme
September 23, 2026FURTHER EXPERTISE
How to measure the impact of a communication skills training programme
Expert Opinion from Rich Watts published September 23, 2026
Measuring the impact of communication skills training is one of the questions that HR managers and L&D leads find most difficult to answer confidently. But this question is also the one that comes up most often when they are making the case to senior leadership for continued investment.
Measuring the impact of communication skills training requires planning, and that planning needs to happen before the programme begins rather than afterwards. The organisations that can demonstrate the clearest impact from their communication skills training are almost always the ones that decided what they were going to measure, and gathered a baseline before the first session took place. This article sets out how to be more like those organisations!
THE CASE FOR MEASUREMENT
Why measuring communication skills training is harder than measuring other training
Communication skills sit in the category that learning and development professionals call 'soft skills'. Soft skills is a really unhelpful term, because the skills themselves are neither simple to develop nor easy to demonstrate. The challenge with measuring soft skills is not that they are unobservable. It is that the changes they produce are often slower, more subjective and harder to attribute to a single intervention than the changes produced by things like health and safety training.
If you train someone to use a new piece of software, you can test whether they can use it at the end of the session. If you run a communication skills programme for twenty managers, the changes you are hoping to see will play out over months, across dozens of real situations and are influenced by the context of everything else that is happening in the organisation.
All of this combines to make it really important to be clear from the outset about what you are measuring and how.
Discover more about our Communication Skills Programmes
A USEFUL MODEL
A framework for thinking about measurement: the four levels
The most widely used framework for evaluating training effectiveness is the Kirkpatrick model, which describes four levels of evaluation. It is a useful starting point because it makes explicit the distinction between measuring what participants think of the training, what they have learned, whether they have changed their behaviour, and what impact that change has had on the organisation.
Level 1 — Reaction
Reaction data captures how participants felt about the training: whether they found it relevant, engaging and well-facilitated. It is collected immediately after each session, usually through a short feedback form. Reaction data is easy to gather and widely used, but it is the weakest form of evidence of impact. A session that participants found enjoyable is not necessarily one that produced lasting behavioural change. Equally, sessions that feel challenging and uncomfortable are sometimes the most developmentally significant.
Level 2 — Learning
Learning data captures what participants have taken from the training in terms of knowledge, understanding or skill. In communication skills training, this is typically measured through confidence ratings and is done by asking participants to rate their confidence in specific skill areas before and after the programme. Pre- and post-programme confidence surveys, designed with care, can produce some more useful data about where learning has been strongest and where further development might be needed.
Level 3 — Behaviour
Behaviour data captures whether participants are actually communicating differently as a result of the programme. This is the level of measurement that most organisations aspire to but few are able to actually achieve. The most useful approach is a combination of asking people to reflect on specific situations in which they applied what they learned and what happened, and line manager or peer observation. Three months after delivery is typically the earliest useful point for behaviour measurement; six months gives a clearer picture.
Level 4 — Results
Results data captures the organisational outcomes that the training was commissioned to influence. This is the level of measurement that carries most weight with senior decision-makers, and it is the one that requires the most planning to get right. Results indicators might include staff retention rates in the teams where the programme was delivered, changes in employee engagement scores, reductions in the number of HR-managed performance or conduct cases, or improvements in the quality of leadership communication as measured through a subsequent 360 feedback process. The key is that these indicators are agreed and baselined before the programme begins.
HOW TO DO IT
A practical measurement framework for communication skills training
A measurement framework does not need to be complex. In practice, the most useful frameworks are the ones that are simple enough to actually use. They will likely be a small number of clearly defined indicators, measured at clearly defined points. The following structure works well for most communication skills programmes.
- Before the programme: establish the baseline. Gather the data that will allow you to compare before and after. At minimum, this means a participant confidence survey covering the specific skill areas the programme will address. Rate them on a simple five-point scale, so that change is easy to read. Where possible, it also means a line manager survey or structured conversation gathering their observations of the participants' current communication strengths and development areas. If you want to go as far as possible, then also collate any relevant organisational data that the programme is intended to influence: engagement scores, turnover data, the frequency of HR-managed people management issues.
- During the programme: track engagement and early indicators. At the end of each session, gather reaction data. After the second or third session, add a short mid-programme reflection asking participants what they have tried to apply and what has been most useful. This gives the training provider an early signal about what is working well and what might need adjustment. It also gives the organisation early qualitative evidence of application that can be useful in interim reporting.
- Immediately after the programme: measure learning. Repeat the confidence survey used at the baseline. Ask participants to reflect on the most significant development they have experienced and to identify one specific situation in which they communicated differently as a result of the training.
- Three to six months after completion: measure behaviour and results. Repeat the confidence survey. Survey line managers or gather peer observations on how participants are communicating. Review any organisational indicators that were baselined before the programme. The gap between the baseline data and the three-to-six-month follow-up data is the strongest evidence of the programme's impact.
NEXT STEPS
What to do with the data you gather
Data gathered through a measurement framework is only valuable if it is used. At minimum, the findings from a post-programme evaluation should be written up in a short impact report that sets out what the programme covered, the key findings from the measurement, what the data suggests about the impact and where further investment might be most productive.
That report gives senior leadership evidence that the training budget was well spent and a basis for deciding whether to continue the investment. It will also give the HR team or L&D lead the material they need to make the case for the next phase of development. Where the data shows that something in the programme did not work as intended, it also gives the evidence that makes it possible to design the next programme more effectively.
GOING FURTHER
Related reading from Further Communications
Measurement works best when it is aligned with a clear needs analysis at the outset. For guidance on how to assess what your organisation needs, see our guide to identifying your team's communication training needs.
If you are still in the planning stage, our step-by-step guide to setting up a communication skills programme covers how to build measurement into the commissioning process from the start.
If you need to make the case for this investment first, our guide to building a business case for a communication skills training programme sets out how measurement data strengthens the argument for continued investment.
To see the full scope of what a communication skills programme from Further looks like, visit our communication skills programme development page.
HOW FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS CAN HELP
Measurement built in from the beginning, not bolted on at the end.
Further Communications designs measurement into every programme we deliver. Before a programme begins, we work with the HR lead or L&D team to agree the indicators we will track, design the baseline survey, and establish the framework for the follow-up evaluation. At the end of the programme, we produce an impact report that sets out clearly what has changed and what the data shows.
If you are designing a programme and want to be able to demonstrate its impact clearly we are always happy to talk through how to build that in from the outset.
Please do get in touch directly and we will get back to you within one working day.
