To measure the effectiveness of training, you will need training indicators that show your performance.
The use of time, money and resources for employee training depends on 3 simple questions:
- Did attendees learn anything of value?
- Did the training increase your performance at work?
- Did it contribute to generating the desired business results?
However, a simple “yes” or “no” will not be enough of an answer. To properly measure the effectiveness of training, you will need key performance indicators or KPIs.
7 training indicators to measure training effectiveness
Traditionally, parameters such as the number of people trained, approval scores, cost per employee or hours dedicated to training were used. These KPIs are often outdated, or too simple to produce valuable information.
Training or training indicators should focus on driving business objectives. These are some of the most efficient:
1. Time for learning
In employee training, the faster students learn, the sooner they can produce results. Consequently, learning time becomes an important indicator of the effectiveness of training.
Instructional program designers focus a lot on making learning easy and engaging for students to shorten the learning curve.
To track the average, as well as the individual time it takes for students to finish their training. You can also form focus groups and evaluate their performance, both before and after training, to see how long it takes to reach a certain level of proficiency.
2. Retention of knowledge and skills
If there is one common trait among us humans, it is our unequivocal ability to forget information.
To address this problem, training program designers are constantly trying to make learning more engaging, shorter, and repeated at regular intervals. The ability of students to retain the knowledge and skills acquired is one of the training indicators that will help you evaluate its effectiveness. It is usually known by measuring the difference between pre- and post-training evaluations.
3. Transfer of training
The sole objective of corporate training is to enable employees to transform knowledge into skills. That’s why you should strive to align learning with the desired performance of students and the performance of the organization as a whole.
Whether employees are able to transfer the information learned to their jobs is an important indicator to measure the effectiveness of training.
Post-classroom practical training, digital training, performance data and observation are suitable to help evaluate this training indicator, thus uncovering the reasons or knowledge gaps that interfere with the transfer of knowledge to the job.
4. Impact on organizational performance metrics
Training allows companies to sell more, increase the efficiency and productivity of services and comply with regulations. Simply put, training is the key to improving individual and organizational performance.
Measuring this difference between performance metrics, before and after training, is the key to understanding its contribution to business ROI.
The impact of training on employee and team/department performance also allows you to shape the scope of future training and define performance objectives.
5. Employee Engagement
Nowadays, employees have greater bargaining power, the labor market is very transparent and attracting the most qualified workers is a very competitive activity.
More and more organizations are using analytics to measure employee satisfaction, trust, and commitment to getting work done.
Training is an important factor in determining employee experience, and tracking training indicators improves effectiveness.
Employee engagement cannot be ignored as it quantifies the quality of training, improves employee retention and reduces employee turnover rate.
6. Net Promoter Score
Customer satisfaction is increasingly crucial to a company’s success because, with social media, customers can make or break your organization’s image.
The Net Promoter Score or NPS allows customers to rate – on a scale of 1 to 10 – the likelihood that they will suggest or recommend your services to friends and colleagues based on their experience.
The same idea can be applied to measure employee satisfaction by asking them: “How likely are you to recommend this course to a colleague?” This can function as an indicator of whether the training provided to your employees is effective.
7. Stakeholder satisfaction
Analytics-based training evaluation revolves a lot around data mining and number crunching. However, quantitative data and reports can be reinforced with qualitative evaluation. And the best sources of qualitative information are stakeholders.
Stakeholders have the final seal of approval on the effectiveness of the training. They observe whether employees are able to transfer knowledge/skills to their jobs.
They are also responsible for employee performance metrics as well as the team as a whole. Knowing all this, it is safe to assume that stakeholder satisfaction is one of the most effective training indicators of training programs.