Interviewer: Mariham Magdy
“People need to be empowered with knowledge, skills, motivation and resources to maximize their personal and professional potential and to make a positive change in this world”
Nader Bechini
Brief Biography about the Interviewee:
Nader Bechini CRP, is Director of ROI Institute MENA and ATD Expert facilitator. For the last 18 years he has worked with organizations in more than 25 countries. Nader’s life mission is to make a positive change in this world through supporting change in behaviours.
Nader holds MSc in Marketing. He facilitates workshops, consults with organizations, and speaks at conferences worldwide.
1- HR Revolution Middle East: Welcome Nader, we are really happy for having the opportunity to interview you today. As an ambassador for the ROI Institute & the ROI culture in the Middle East; to what extent do you believe companies in ME now have better awareness on improving the effectiveness of their non-capital investments using the ROI Methodology™?
Nader Bechini: Measuring the return on investment (ROI) has earned a place among the critical issues in the Human Resource Development (HRD) field in Middle East. For almost a decade, ROI has been on conference agendas and at professional meetings. Journals and newsletters regularly embrace the concept with increasing print space. A recent survey “The State of Human Capital Analytics in the Middle East Report 2018” revealed that Impact and ROI are top of mind in the Middle East HR Professionals. More than 85% of survey respondents are currently or are planning to measure impact and ROI of their human capital investments.
It is evident that there is an increasing demand to show the financial impact of expenditures that invest in people, learning and development, HR and improvement initiatives. There has always been a concern over the value of programs, projects and all organizational improvement efforts and now the definition of value includes financial impact. The expenditures used to be categorized as a “cost of doing business” – now they are an investment and demand a ROI.
2- HR Revolution Middle East: One of the sentences that really attracted me while reading your reputable biography is “His life mission is to make a positive change in this world through supporting change in behaviors”. Why have you chosen specially such a hard mission? What challenges do leaders face while supporting others to change their behaviors? How this could have a marvelous effect on individual & organizational level?
Nader Bechini: The amount and pace of transformation around us is overwhelming. Change has become the new normal. Meanwhile we are very good at identifying, observing and analyzing from a third-person’s point of view all kinds of change that are happening around us or needed for the greater good. Many of us know from personal experience how difficult it is to get rid of a bad habit, to apply a healthier life style or balance work-life in a better way. People need to be empowered with knowledge, skills, motivation and resources to maximize their personal and professional potential and to make a positive change in this world.
3- HR Revolution Middle East: We cannot miss the opportunity to ask you about the project implementation for which you have been awarded the Best ROI Institute International Implementation.
Nader Bechini:It was an ROI Study for L&D program to a major telecom company in Middle East, the program was implemented for more than 800 senior managers and team leaders to enhance their creativity and innovation skills and to achieve high performance. The program was designed and implemented to deliver bottom-line results, which yielded a 149% ROI.
4- HR Revolution Middle East: During the last 17 years, you have led consulting projects in 25 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia; from your extensive experience, how do business challenges vary between those different regions & cultures? What valuable recommendations would you share with other professionals working in –to that extent- diversified business communities?
Nader Bechini:Cultural sensitivities is important to understand. Your projects, programs and activities need to be equally designed with sensitivities in mind. In Learning and development we must recognize that cultural differences affect each learner’s ability to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create in the cognitive domain. For example the dimension of “Power Distance” (which is The degree to which members of a group expect power to be distributed Equally, individuals who were raised in countries with a medium‐high or high power distance (such as Russia and India) tend to believe that followers should obey leaders without question, however, People who come from low or medium‐low power distance cultures (such as Netherlands, the United States, and England) tend to believe that power is shared and that followers and leaders should involve one another in decisions.
5- HR Revolution Middle East: You have already participated in a lot of conferences worldwide in USA, Russia, Australasia, Netherlands, Sudan and others. To what extent do you believe that attending professional conferences represents nowadays a very important pillar in growing and shaping professionals global mind-set and their ability to stay up-to-date with the latest business challenges?
Nader Bechini:Attending professional conferences helps L&D & HR Professionals gain insights into the latest trends, best practices, and new solutions for designing, delivering, implementing, and measuring HR programs. International conferences and expo represent great opportunities to learn from the world’s leading business professionals, and to network with peers from difference organizations and cultures.
6- HR Revolution Middle East: Would you tell us more about your distinguished participation in ATD Europe Summit, first time in Belgium, October 2019?
Nader Bechini:My presentation at ATD European summit was about “Measuring business impact: Making business case for learning using the ROI Methodology™”. In fact, huge amount of money is spent every year on training employees and yet most L&D departments does not make the effort to measure or document the impact. Today’s L&D professionals need to prove the value of L&D Expenditures and to win the trust of business leaders by utilizing analytics to connect training’s impact to business outcomes. The ROI Methodology™ is used in thousands of cases each year in more than 70 countries. The process prescribes five evaluation levels along with a disciplined step-by-step approach to planning, collecting data, summarizing and processing data, isolating the effects of program, converting data to monetary value and calculating ROI. Measuring results provides valuable insight that can drive evidence-based continuous improvement and create the following payoffs:
- Align programs to business need
- Show contributions of selected programs
- Earn respect of senior management
- Enhance program design, implementation and operation
- Defend existing budgets
- Justify future programs
- Improve support for programs
- Identify inefficient programs that need to be redesigned or eliminated
- Identify successful programs, and/or key elements, that can be implemented in other areas
7- HR Revolution Middle East: As a passionate learning and development facilitator leading L&D projects in 25 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North America; from your point of view what are the major challenges for the L&D industry nowadays? How can L&D professionals acquaint themselves with the needed skills to meet those challenges and provide a remarkable role in this industry?
Nader Bechini:In my point of view, there are three majors challenges facing L&D Professionals:
1) Appealing To A Multi-Generational Audience: L&D Professionals should use innovative learning technologies to engage learners (microlearning, VR/AR, gamification, etc.)
2) Ambiguous Objectives and lack of business alignments: L&D
Aligning training programs is essentially the process of prioritizing the goals and missions of the organisation’s training activities around the business needs of the enterprise, and ensuring that learning helps drive business results. It is imperative to design the programs only after taking into consideration the organisation’s unique business culture and establishing agreed upon business objectives.
3) There is increased focus on the impact and return on investment (ROI) of major programs.
Although this trend has been evolving for years, the movement has been significant in the last five years—Senior executives and the chief financial officer are vowing to make sure their organizations are efficient, responsive, lean, and mean. This is causing major projects to be pushed to the impact and ROI analysis, showing a connection to the business and the financial ROI, the ultimate measure of success. In some cases, an ROI forecast is required before the program is designed, developed, or implemented. Top executives crave impact and ROI data. A major study, supported by ATD, showed that the No. 1 measure desired by CEOs from Learning & Development is business impact, the No. 2 measure is ROI. At the same time, these executives indicated that the current level of measurement is far from where they want it. Only 8 percent said that they see the business impact now, while 96 percent wanted to see it. For ROI, 4 percent see it now, and 74 percent want to see it in the future.
THANK YOU