How to measure the success of training and development using KPIs
Are you and your teams using KPIs in your corporate training to measure the success and effectiveness of your employee training programs?
Using employee training metrics is the best way to ensure your employees are getting the most out of training opportunities. Without corporate training metrics, you won’t know whether your employee training is doing what you want it to—preparing and upskilling your employees for their job-specific roles.
If you’re wondering how to measure the success of training and development in the workplace, we’re glad you’re here.
In this article, we’re diving into the world of KPIs and corporate training. You’ll learn:
- How to measure training effectiveness
- How to evaluate KPIs in training
- How to best administer training and track KPIs
Keep reading to gain valuable insights into corporate learning metrics.
What are KPIs in corporate training?
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are directly related to your business goals and objectives. They help you understand and measure the effectiveness of your employee training programs, which drives your success toward company goals.
There are many different names for KPIs, including:
- Indicators of training needs
- Corporate learning metrics
- Employee training metrics
However, regardless of the term you use, they all relate to the same process: understanding the effectiveness of your training programs.
KPIs provide valuable insight into what’s working well and what needs adjustment. Without KPIs, you won’t know whether your training program is helping better prepare your employees to meet on-the-job goals or not.
So, if you want to know that training is paying off and employees are achieving goals, you need to know how to measure the success of training and development programs.
How to measure training effectiveness using KPIs
Measuring training effectiveness using KPIs in corporate training isn’t always easy (especially if this is your first time doing it), but it’s always worth it.
is a simple 4-step process that anyone can follow.
Below we’ve listed four steps to help you start identifying and implementing corporate training metrics into your training programs.
Step #1: Identifying KPIs and defining outcomes
The first step is to identify your KPIs and define the outcomes you want to achieve.
During the KPI identification phase, you’ll want to partner with stakeholders to understand the goals of the training. It’s important that they’re aligned on the intent and goal of the training. To get everyone on the same page, it can be helpful to ask questions, like:
- What outcomes do you want to see?
- Are you looking for a change in employee behavior?
- Is there a specific customer service or sales problem that needs to be solved?
Once you nailed down some desired results, you want to pick objective and measurable KPIs. These should be data points that you can easily track throughout the training. Some examples of employee training metrics include:
- Job competency rate
- The time it takes to complete training
- Quiz or assessment scores before vs. after the training
- Training completion rate
Objective, measurable corporate learning metrics will help you recognize where employees excel and where you may need to make training adjustments. They also provide you with a way to pinpoint skills gaps or training needs.
Step #2: Deciding how to evaluate KPIs
Now that you know your desired outcomes and you’ve identified some KPIs, it’s time to decide how to evaluate these KPIs.
Measuring your KPIs is crucial to gaining valuable insight into your training programs. If you’ve put the time and money into choosing KPIs and implementing a training program, you want to understand the program’s effectiveness and make adjustments if necessary.
Will you focus on reaction and engagement?
Or, do you want to put more emphasis on behavior?
The easiest way to track your KPIs is through a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is an online platform that can house all of your training content in one place for easy and quick accessibility.
An LMS is also a powerful tool that provides robust reporting and tracking with an integrated training metrics dashboard. This dashboard allows you to:
- Track learner progress
- Monitor completion rates
- Identify trends, areas of opportunity, and skill gaps
With an LMS like Spoke®, you won’t have to pick and choose between reaction and engagement or behavior. Spoke is flexible and has the ability to capture:
- Reaction
- Engagement
- Knowledge and retention
- Behavior
- Impact
Investing in an LMS makes tracking KPIs in corporate training simple and easy.
Step #3: Administering the training
After you’ve decided on a few KPIs and how to track them, it’s time to administer the training.
You may already have a training program, but does it allow you to measure and track your KPIs?
If your current training doesn’t provide the opportunity to measure your KPIs, you may want to look into and invest in a custom training program (or add some custom components to your training).
For example, your training may include a series of eLearning courses that measure reaction, engagement, and knowledge, but doesn’t gauge behavior. The solution could be to create a new interactive session for learners to practice skills and apply information.
In addition, a custom program allows you to:
- Deliver job-specific content to your employees
- Keep content on-brand with your organization
- Engage employees with relevant, manageable content
It’s also important to have a training program that fits the needs of each team. Different teams may have different KPIs and need specific training tailored to them. Tracking the number of follow-up sales calls the month after a sales training is relevant to your sales team, not your customer service team.
So, having a personalized training program for each team will help you:
- Better train teams for their specific roles
- More effectively track KPIs for each team
Ensuring that your training aligns with the teams’ needs helps you more accurately choose and track employee training metrics.
Step #4: Make Adjustments to the Training
Once you’ve started to track KPIs, you can start looking at the data and making adjustments where necessary. And don’t be worried if issues do arise. The reason you’re tracking KPIs is to pinpoint these problem areas and make improvements.
Here are two random scenarios to help you understand how tracking KPIs helps you make training adjustments.
Scenario #1
Maybe, you see that only 50% of your employees completed the training in the allotted time.
You could send out a survey to see what people thought or look into the modules to see if there was one that most people got stuck on. You’re simply looking for something that hindered these employees from finishing the training.
Scenario #2
Or, perhaps you see that nearly 100% of your employees finished the training, but their post-training assessment scores were the same as their pre-training scores.
You may need to go through the content to make sure it was relevant to the content you desired your employees to learn. However, it could also be that you didn’t present the training material in an engaging way, so employees didn’t take the time to digest it.
Adjustments may be small or large. Regardless, your KPIs should help you recognize areas of the training that need improvement.
Expert Help with How to Evaluate Training KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are vital data points that help you understand whether your training programs generate the desired results or not. They can help you know if employees:
- Engage with the training content
- Find the content useful for job-specific roles
- Become more competent in their roles
On the other hand, key performance indicators for the training department can act as indicators of training needs—pointing out places where you can improve the training.
To measure training effectiveness using KPIs in corporate training, you need to:
- Identify KPIs and define outcomes
- Decide how to evaluate your KPIs
- Administer your training
- Use KPI data to make adjustments to the training
By following these four steps, you can better understand your training program and where you may need to rework some components.
At Unboxed Training & Technology, we pride ourselves on our ability to help companies implement effective, engaging, and trackable training programs. We know how valuable training is to an organization, so we developed an award-winning LMS that delivers custom content and provides real-time KPI tracking. As a result, Spoke® is a one-of-a-kind learning technology platform that makes the concept of Skill AgilityTM a reality. So whether you already know how to evaluate KPIs and training effectiveness or not, Spoke is the perfect training tool for your organization.
