5 Tips for Measuring Leadership Development in Your Remote Employees

How will you measure your leadership success?

Do you know how to measure the effectiveness of a training program?

Are you interested in developing your employee's leadership skills?

You'll find that by investing in employee education, you're benefiting both your business and employees for the long-run. 

Not only will employees be more effectively trained for future leadership positions, but an emphasis on education can also help decrease turnover rates and increase the productivity of your employees. 

However, you won't know how well a leadership program is working without a proper way of conducting and measuring success. Measuring leadership development program effectiveness is vital for training success.

Read on to learn our top tips for measuring leadership development, as well as the best ways to set up your program for success early on!

What is Leadership Development?

Leadership development training involves any activities or programs that improve leadership skills or abilities.

By focusing on investing in high-quality programs that employees respond to, you can train remote and in-house employees more effectively for future success.

Some of the benefits of a leadership development program are:

• In-house preparation for senior positions
• Prolonged employee success
• Decreased employee turnover
• Increased employee productivity
• Greater employee engagement

Let’s jump into the five ways your organization can ensure a return on investment of leadership development programs.

[Download] Leadership Training Topics Essential Checklist

How to Measure Leadership Development Programs for Success

1. Create Tangible Outcomes

Why are you implementing a training program in the first place? Establish tangible outcomes with measurable KPIs to track the success of your leadership training.

Are you currently or have you ever wondered how to evaluate leadership effectiveness?

Desiring your employees to be better leaders and critical thinkers is a worthy goal, but you need to track their progress to prove improvement.

Write down the tangible outcomes of the training that you expect to see in a given timeframe:

• Increase employee training satisfaction rates
• Improve customer satisfaction rate by [enter KPI]
• Reduce employee turnover this year

Would you like to see your employees take more initiative during customer calls? See how many times your employees ask a manager for help per month, then compare it to the number of questions asked post-training.

If you're stumped, you can always ask your employees for ideas or consider current problems and how leadership development can help.

2. Criteria to Evaluate Leadership Effectiveness

Many leadership programs go wrong when the business fails to decide on the criteria of measurement. People may feel as if the training program was successful, but how do you know?

Set yourself and your employees up for success by determining the training topics beforehand. With clear standards of success in mind, you can design an effective program that trains your team to close knowledge gaps.

Some examples of leadership training criteria:

• Skills that leaders need in your industry
• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Align criteria with employees' career visions and plans

Setting up criteria ahead of time is especially beneficial in a remote environment. Clear criteria for an effective leader program will lead to direct completion of goals and objectives, whether inside or outside the office.

[Download] Leadership Training Topics Essential Checklist

3. Communication

Your evaluation of leadership development efforts won't be complete with your remote workers without emphasizing communication. 

Schedule weekly or monthly meetings over video conferencing software to help keep your team members accountable. 

Leadership fails when they don’t recognize the gap in communication between employees and management. Communication is essential in the digital workplace, especially in the new normal of remote work.

Open communication can also help leaders address questions and concerns as soon as they come up instead of at the end of the program.

4. Continual Program Evaluation

An emphasis on communication early on will help employees engage until the end of the training program. But you’ll also want to know how things are going every step of the way.

Enters: questionnaires and feedback.

Regular questionnaires will help you assess your employees' general opinions on the training and whether they thought it was worth their time. 

Creating a space for open and honest feedback throughout the course will also help direct the leadership training program.

Here are a few questions you can ask as the training is going on:

• Is the training engaging?
• Are you learning new and valuable skills?
• Can you share with me a few topics you have learned recently?

And here are some questions you can ask at the end of the training:

• Do you feel the training helped you meet the objectives?
• Would you recommend this training to others?
• Did you learn anything new from the training?
• How has this training improved your understanding of your role?

Asking questions and receiving feedback throughout the course is one of the best ways of measuring leadership program development effectiveness. You can course-correct (pun intended) as soon as an issue arises.

[Download] Leadership Training Topics Essential Checklist

5. Use A Powerful Reporting Tool

Finally, consider using a training software or platform with your employees.

These tools, often called an LMS, can be incredibly useful for promoting continuous communication, garnering immediate feedback, and calculating ROI.

Because an LMS is mobile, your trainers and employees can also stay engaged from anywhere. It’s perfect for any remote workforce.

A learning management system is also customizable, so your trainers can easily monitor and choose what and how the employees learn. And, it encourages constant communication between all parties involved, making immediate feedback easy.

An LMS will provide reporting APIs, business intelligence reports, etc., giving you a real-time look into how effective the training is.

Measure Program Effectiveness for Future Leaders

Measuring program effectiveness for your leadership development activities is one of the most important aspects of a quality program. Without measurement, you won't be able to determine if you have a good ROI.

Getting quantitative measures of effectiveness can take time, but it’ll be worth it.

Collecting regular feedback from employees can also go a long way. Feedback can help you course-correct and ensure that your employees feel the training is worthwhile.

If you want to start measuring leadership development program effectiveness and equip your managers to lead, reach out to Unboxed Training & Technology. Request a demo to see our leadership training in action!