When you launch an employee training program, you expect to raise employees’ efficiency, productivity, and performance. You spend a great deal of money designing and creating eLearning courses and resources and hiring subject matter experts, so don’t you think you also need to check the effectiveness of your online training program?
In this article, we will discuss the following concerns about an employee training program in detail:
- What do you understand about an effective employee training program?
- Why is measuring the effectiveness of employee training programs important?
- What are training metrics?
- What are some common training metrics?
- How to evaluate or measure training effectiveness?
What do you understand about an effective employee training program?
An effective employee training program has the following attributes:
- Provides just-in-time support
- Increase competencies of employees
- Meets business objectives
- Fulfill training demands and expectations of employees
- Provides intuitive and engaging eLearning courses and resources
- Provides easy-to-digest micro-content
- Increase performance and productivity of employees
Why is measuring the effectiveness of employee training programs important?
An employee training program is launched to bring desired change to the organization. A change that makes the workforce more productive, sustainable, and resilient to future shocks.
Here are some reasons why you need to measure the effectiveness of the employee training program:
- To find out whether the training program is achieving the desired outcomes or not.
- Get insights into employee engagement, behavior, response, and targets achieved.
- Improve employee retention rate.
- To refine, redesign and restructure eLearning courses.
- Increase ROI by identifying areas that need improvement and changes.
- Measure team performance.
What are training metrics?
A training metric is a quantifiable entity used to track, assess, and measure the training program. Using training metrics, you can improve the performance of your employees and business.
For instance, you launch a training program to increase digital marketing. After some time, you can figure out that employees who received training were able to increase sales on various platforms. This means your training program worked.
Increased employee engagement, performance, productivity, and increase in business revenue indicate that your training program is worthwhile and useful.
What are some common training metrics?
Here is a list of some common training metrics:
- Pass or fail rate, which is usually applied to MCQs and quizzes and their successful completion.
- Scoring helps you figure out employees’ performance and adjust the difficulty level of a test if needed.
- Training experience satisfaction helps you understand what employees feel about training and whether they are happy with it or not.
- Training completion rate, which shows the number of eLearning courses finished by whom, how, and when.
- The training dropout rate shows the number of employees who decided to leave training in the middle. This can help you know what made employees leave so early and hence you can work on those problems.
- Post-training performance, which shows the effectiveness of the online training program, i.e., how well employees are utilizing the learned skills, and whether they’re able to meet business targets and contribute to organization success.
How to evaluate or measure training effectiveness?
The most popular method to assess the effectiveness of training programs is the “Kirkpatrick Model”. The following are the ways to measure the effectiveness of training programs:
Reaction:
It measures how employees have reacted to the training program and the usefulness, effectiveness, and relevance of the training. You can use questionnaires and surveys to collect user feedback. Talking to them directly is another way to know whether they liked the training program or not, what they felt was missing, and what they felt should be improved.
The feedback from employees should cover the following topics:
- Did they find the course and resources useful, and relevant?
- What did they learn?
- Are they able to apply the learned skills and knowledge in the real world?
- Did they face any navigation issues?
- Did eLearning professionals answer their doubts?
- What did they enjoy the most about training?
- How was the mobile learning experience?
- Did they face any technical issues while using the app?
- Was the content engaging and easy to understand?
- Do they have any suggestions to give?
Learning:
It assesses the knowledge, skills, and attitudes developed by employees at the conclusion of training. It helps you understand whether employees learned what you wanted them to learn. Those employees who learned properly can be assigned important tasks, while those who still have a lot to learn can keep taking the training.
Employee training can be measured through written tests, online quizzes, MCQs, branching scenarios, eLearning projects, and assignments.
LMS training metrics can be very helpful in evaluating learning. Here are some training metrics that you can use:
- Progress and completion rates of eLearning courses
- Scores in online training assessments
- Breakdown attempts and answers and find out which questions learners found difficult
Behavior:
Post-training, you need to gauge whether employees are able to utilize the skills and knowledge they received through training. Basically, eLearning professionals have to analyze the change in the behavior of learners.
For instance, you can test an employee who received customer service training by placing a prank call or say a trial or test call. You can see how he/she talks or responds to customer queries, his/her tone, and what kind of words he/she uses. This way you can see if the training has brought a desirable change in the employee’s behavior. You can also schedule some interviews of the employees with senior management.
Evaluating employee behavior is important to check the effectiveness of the training program. If employees are able to transfer knowledge and apply skills in a specific situation, this means your training program is very effective.
Results:
It measures how employee training affects business and employee performance. This is to see how training influences business revenue, clients, sales, marketing, and completion of projects. It also evaluates how training helps in improving employee performance, productivity, efficiency, retention, and engagement.
For instance, see how sales training led to improved product sales, meeting customers’ needs, increased ROI, decreased dropout rates, and increased engagement of employees.
Conclusion
Measuring the effectiveness of employee training programs is as important as providing training. By measuring the effectiveness of the training, you can understand where you and your employees are lacking. Using training metrics can easily help you measure how well everybody is doing. If needed, you can bring the desired change in the eLearning courses to satisfy the needs of employees.