Help employees understand the business and make better commercial decisions
Many employees want to make good decisions. They want to serve customers well, use resources responsibly, and contribute to growth. What they do not always have is a clear picture of how value moves through the organisation.
Gallup’s 2024 workplace research connects higher engagement with stronger business outcomes, including productivity, profitability and sales, while its 2025 commentary notes a recent decline in global engagement, especially among managers. Helping people understand how the business makes money is therefore not only a finance exercise. It is a way to create clarity, confidence, and more joined up decision making.
Why understanding the business mode matters now
In many organisations, employees are being asked to operate with more commercial awareness. Budgets are watched closely. Customers expect more value. Teams are asked to improve productivity without reducing quality. Leaders need people to think beyond activity and understand impact.
Deloitte’s 2024 global human capital trends research argues that business and human outcomes need to be considered together, and reports that organisations making meaningful progress on its human capital issues are nearly twice as likely to achieve desired business and human outcomes.
That point is important for learning and development. Employees do not need to become accountants. They need enough commercial and financial understanding to answer practical questions such as:
- Where does our revenue come from?
- What costs are needed to deliver that revenue?
- What improves or reduces margin?
- What affects cash flow?
- Which customer behaviours create value?
- Which internal behaviours protect value?
- How does my role influence the numbers?
When people can answer those questions, finance becomes less abstract. The business becomes easier to navigate.
People do not need to become finance specialists to make better commercial decisions. They need to understand the few business drivers that their daily choices can influence.
Start with the story of how value is created
A helpful starting point is to explain the business model as a story, not a spreadsheet.
Every organisation has a value chain. It identifies a customer need, creates or sources something valuable, delivers it, receives income and reinvests to keep improving. The financial statements are one way of recording that story, but they are rarely the best opening chapter for most learners.
Begin with a simple flow:
Customer need
↓
Customer offer
↓
Revenue
↓
Cost to serve
↓
Profit
↓
Cash
↓
Reinvestment
↓
Growth and resilience
This helps employees see that profit is not simply what is left over. It is the result of thousands of choices about pricing, quality, efficiency, retention, risk, customer experience and resource use.
MDA Training’s financial and commercial skills work takes a similar practical approach, using experiential workshops, business simulations and self led digital learning to help people connect business concepts with confident decision making.
Translate financial language into role-based choices
One common barrier is language. Terms such as gross margin, operating profit, working capital, return on equity or utilisation can feel distant from daily work. The answer is not to remove the terminology. The answer is to translate it.
For example:
- Revenue becomes: how we earn income from customers.
- Margin becomes: how much value remains after the direct cost of delivery.
- Cash flow becomes: whether money arrives in time to pay suppliers, colleagues and commitments.
- Working capital becomes: the money tied up while we wait to be paid or while stock is held.
- Utilisation becomes: how effectively expert time or operational capacity is used.
- Risk becomes: uncertainty that may affect income, cost, reputation, regulation or delivery.
The best finance learning links each term to a familiar decision. A service manager may influence cost to serve. A salesperson may influence price discipline and customer fit. A project manager may influence scope control and cash timing. A graduate may influence accuracy, responsiveness, and customer trust.
MDA’s finance for non financial managers programme is designed around short workshops that build a structured pathway, with the stated aim of improving financial knowledge, decision making confidence and the ability to justify decisions.
Use the business model, not generic examples
Generic examples can be useful at the beginning, but employees learn faster when the learning resembles their actual organisation. A retail business, insurer, law firm, manufacturer, asset manager and engineering business do not make money in the same way. Their revenue drivers, cost structures, risks and performance measures differ.
This is why business acumen training works best when it is tailored to the organisation’s actual model. Learners should explore questions such as:
- What are our main sources of income?
- Which products, services or customer segments are most valuable?
- Which costs are fixed, variable or discretionary?
- Where do delays, errors or rework reduce value?
- Which KPIs show whether the model is working?
- What would happen financially if demand fell, costs rose or customers paid later?
The aim is not to expose confidential detail unnecessarily. It is to create a safe, relevant version of the business that helps people practise judgement.
MDA’s commercial investment simulation, for example, asks teams to manage a business against financial KPIs such as revenue, return on equity and profit, while connecting company performance with equity value and investor decision making.
The closer the learning is to the actual business model, the easier it becomes for employees to move from understanding the numbers to changing the quality of their decisions.
Make it experiential
Commercial understanding is built through practice. Learners need to see the consequences of decisions, not simply hear about them.
A strong learning experience might ask teams to run a simulated business over several rounds. They make decisions about pricing, staffing, investment, customer service, quality, risk and cost. Then they see the impact on revenue, margin, cash and customer outcomes. After each round, they reflect on what happened and adjust.
This matters because business decisions rarely have one perfect answer. Employees need to work within constraints. They may need to balance customer experience with efficiency, growth with risk, or short term pressure with longer term resilience.
Experiential learning creates room for that complexity. MDA Training describes its approach as using interactive simulations, workshops and digital experiences to build practical capability and behaviour change.
Help managers become translators
Managers play a vital role in commercial understanding because they translate strategy into daily work. If managers are unclear about how the business makes money, their teams are likely to be unclear too.
Gallup reported that global engagement fell in 2024 and that managers experienced the sharpest decline. That makes manager support particularly important. Managers need the confidence to discuss priorities, explain the reasons behind decisions and connect team activity to business outcomes.
Practical manager habits include:
- Opening team meetings with one business driver and one operational example.
- Explaining why a KPI matters, not only whether it is on target.
- Asking employees what financial or customer impact a decision may have.
- Inviting finance colleagues to answer questions in plain language.
- Celebrating decisions that protect value, not only decisions that create visible growth.
Connect business acumen with employee engagement
When employees understand the business model, they are often better placed to see meaning in their work. They can connect effort with outcomes. They can understand why priorities change. They can contribute ideas that are commercially thoughtful.
The CIPD’s 2025 Good Work Index is based on a survey of 5,000 UK employees and examines job quality through areas including job satisfaction, skills development, voice, autonomy and wellbeing. Skills development and employee voice are relevant here because commercial understanding can give people a more confident basis for contribution.
LinkedIn’s 2025 workplace learning report also notes that nearly half of learning and talent development professionals say executives are concerned employees do not have the right skills to execute business strategy.
Business acumen sits directly in that gap. It helps employees understand not only what the strategy says, but how it creates value.
What good learning design looks like
A strong programme to help employees understand how the business makes money should include five design principles.
First, make it accessible. Start with the business model before the financial statements.
Second, make it relevant. Use the organisation’s customers, revenue streams, cost drivers and KPIs.
Third, make it practical. Ask learners to make decisions, test assumptions and see consequences.
Fourth, make it safe. Allow people to ask basic questions without embarrassment.
Fifth, make it repeatable. Reinforce learning through manager conversations, team dashboards, project reviews and performance discussions.
The Cabinet Office’s 2024 rapid review on learning and development, employee engagement and wellbeing highlights the importance of evidence informed decision making when designing development opportunities that support employee and organisational benefits.
Practical activity ideas
Here are five activities that can help employees build commercial understanding.
1. The money map
Ask teams to map how money enters, moves through and leaves the organisation. Include customers, suppliers, employees, assets, tax, investment and profit. Then ask where their team influences the map.
2. The margin moment
Give learners a simple scenario where revenue increases but profit falls. Ask them to diagnose why. This helps challenge the assumption that more sales always mean better performance.
3. The cash challenge
Show a profitable business that runs short of cash because customers pay late, stock rises or projects overrun. Ask learners what they would do differently.
4. The customer value lens
Ask teams to compare two customers or contracts. One has higher revenue. The other has better margin, lower risk or stronger retention. Which is more valuable, and why?
5. The decision consequence round
Give teams a business simulation with several decision rounds. After each round, show the financial and customer impact of their choices. Let them improve through reflection.
What’s next?
The most effective approach is not to overwhelm people with finance terminology. It is to make the business model visible, translate the numbers into everyday choices and create opportunities to practise in a safe environment.
We help organisations do this through experiential financial and commercial skills programmes, business simulations and tailored learning experiences that connect knowledge with practical judgement. To help your people understand how your business creates value, speak to us about a programme designed around your organisation’s actual commercial priorities.
