ROI in Volleyball

391 369 Ellen Ensher
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By: Steven Sosa

 

While feeding my social media addiction this weekend, I can across a Facebook memory of my high school volleyball team and I. The photo Facebook shared with me was our first CIF Championship into 2012. This had me reminiscing about all the hard work we put in year long, training for the best return a championship trophy. Interestingly enough the two words training and return reminded me of something I learned in my Management Training and Development class. What I am talking about is Return on Investment in relation to a training program! With a little more research into the topic I gathered that my experience in volleyball and this ROI stuff are kind of similar!

Now ROI is the last step in determining how profitable a training program really is. There are many steps in between that must be done first before calculating ROI. Such as employee reaction, learning, and behavior in relation to the training. If we were to substitute training for volleyball practice, then we can also describe how a team reaches its ROI.  While an organization’s ROI is usually tied to increase in profit, a competitive volleyball team’s ROI would be to be #1. If a team achieves their goal and obtains the title as champion, then this can correlate to their training program being successful. So who exactly plays a role in a volleyball team’s training program then?

Well if we look at the coach is the trainer, as he pretty much already is, then it is simple. The team becomes the employees who need training. A successful coach does multiple things that coincides with a successful training program. My coach for instance would have a short talk with his players after every practice to see what we thought about the practice. This is exactly like a training reaction evaluation. In addition, to test what a volleyball player has learned during training you test his skills against his teammates, this can be done through scrimmaging at practice. While if you want to test a player’s behavior you watch his performance in a game. In the world this could be an employee’s performance on the sales floor! If a salesperson performs well after a training and brings an increase in profit, assuming it is directly tied to the training, then the company can figure out the exact ROI.

Let’s say that the ROI was directly connected to the training for the salesperson. How does this then tie back to volleyball? Well if a volleyball player is performing well on the floor, or in game, and thus leading to winning games and eventually the final game. Then the team and coach have successfully built a way to their ROI. The team achieved their goal of being #1 with the help of the coach’s training program. Glad to know that my was able to achieve an ROI so early in life… ahhh the good-old days…

Link: http://www.icmi.com/Resources/Learning-and-Development/2014/07/Measuring-the-Effectiveness-of-Your-Training-Program