Understanding the Importance of Evaluating Training Effectiveness

When a new employee is hired, it’s common for them to complete some kind of onboarding training. Most companies also have employee training programs for existing employees to help them improve and widen their skill sets. However, if you aren’t evaluating training effectiveness, why train employees in the first place?

You might offer corporate training to your team, but do you know how much information employees are retaining? Evaluating training effectiveness gives you a clear picture of what material employees know well and identifies areas for improvement.

Read on to learn more about the importance of measuring training effectiveness. You'll also find some helpful tips on how to assess training effectiveness in an organisation.

4 Benefits of Evaluating Training Effectiveness

Maybe you already have a training program in place at your company. Now, you may be thinking, "why is evaluation of training effectiveness necessary?" Well, mostly because your boss is going to ask if the investment was worth it.

Here’s your guide to understanding the four key benefits of regularly evaluating your employee training.

Identify Areas for Improvement

When you assess a training program, you can determine whether it’s producing the outcomes you want to see. Regularly evaluating your training programs helps you identify where the training might be falling short or not engaging learners. By addressing these areas, employees will get more out of corporate training to improve performance.

Keep Learners and Trainers Accountable

Evaluations need to involve your training technology and the people who use it. Through an assessment builder, like the one found in Spoke® LMS, you can easily track employee training. Managers can gain insights into employees’ engagement with various training programs, administer surveys, and understand the ROI of training.

Regular evaluations hold everyone accountable to the standard your company has set for training.

Improve Employee Retention Rate

Individualized, quality development makes employees feel more rationally and emotionally committed to their jobs. Additionally, training helps employees feel more confident in their work by up-leveling their skill sets. In most cases, employees are more inclined to stay with companies that invest in their learning and development. Improving retention rates means saving your company from high onboarding costs.

Better Training = Higher ROI

If you forget all of the other benefits, remember to tell this one to your boss. Investing in employee training can increase profit margins, help your organization predict future growth, and even improve stock-market performance. Use regular evaluations to measure training effectiveness, refine your training methods, provide a better experience to learners, and increase ROI as a result.

How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Training Programs Conducted in Organizations

Now that you understand the benefits of measuring training effectiveness let’s talk about how to evaluate training outcomes. Below, we've broken down some steps you can take when evaluating training and development effectiveness.

Identify Specific KPIs

The first thing to do when assessing training program effectiveness is identifying your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Choose specific data points that are most important to your organization: lift in specific product sales, more sales calls per month, higher employee engagement, etc. These are the primary indicators you’ll use to determine whether training is working or not.

Administer a Pre-Training Assessment

Conduct an initial assessment before employees start a new training program. A pre-training assessment provides a baseline of what employees do and don't know. You can then compare results at the end of the training, which makes measuring training effectiveness easier.

Check-in During Training

Don't wait until a training program is finished to get feedback. Check-in with your employees as they're working through the content. Survey learners to find out what they think of the training, what they enjoy, and what they would change to improve the learning experience. Take note of employee feedback and consider using it to adjust your training program for the future.

Measure Engagement

When figuring out how to assess effectiveness of training, employee engagement is one of the primary metrics to look at. Consider the way your team is reacting to the training content. Are employees only completing minimum training requirements? Or are learners going above and beyond to complete non-required training?

Additionally, evaluate the different modalities of training to see which is most engaging.

Assess Knowledge Retention

Next, assess knowledge retention. You can do this by having employees take the same assessment that they completed before training began. Measuring knowledge retention helps you identify what employees have learned, and if they will remember it outside of the virtual classroom.

Measure Behavior

In addition to testing knowledge retention, it's important to measure employee behavior. How have employees' behaviors changed since they completed their training? Are they more confident on-the-job? Do they ask fewer questions? Are they getting things done more efficiently? You can virtually survey employees or have coaches evaluate behavior changes.

Measure Results

Finally, measure the results of your employee training program. How to measure training effectiveness and results circles back to your KPIs. Evaluate employee training results based on your selected KPIs. Have sales numbers increased? Is there an increase in customer satisfaction ratings since the training took place? Are employees more engaged?

Even if you don’t see results immediately, don’t stop training. Ongoing training will produce a higher level of productivity and reduce common mistakes employees may make throughout the day.

Keep refining your program and training employees to benefit both individual and corporate growth.

Let’s Evaluate Your Employee Training Effectiveness

Now that you know more about the importance of evaluating training effectiveness and how to assess a training program, it's time to take a closer look at your current training efforts.

Are you satisfied with your corporate training metrics, or could they be better?

If you need a custom training solution for your team, Unboxed Technology can help. Request a demo to learn more about our employee training programs and how we can develop a program that's engaging and effective.