It can sometimes feel like training is a conveyer belt of courses and certifications, with businesses having certain mandatory boxes to tick and training standards they must adhere to. A lot of us are so caught up in making sure training and learning is delivered, the performance and impact of training is often overlooked.
What’s apparent when we speak to customers is there is not enough time spent analysing their current L&D strategy, to see what is working and what isn’t. After you’ve completed your training, it’s important to evaluate your programme so that you can keep improving any future training. But what should you be measuring?
The metrics that matter
There’s no one size fits all solution when it comes to measuring the success of your learning and development training programme, however creating a robust and consistent evaluation approach is a great place to start. The following metrics will help: Â
Skills attainment & knowledge retention – measuring your learners’ level of skills and knowledge pre-learning and again post-learning is imperative to give you a true indication of the success of your training programmes. Has your workforces’ knowledge and skills to perform a task improved? Have they met the learning objectives you initially set out? Is there sufficient evidence of your staff applying newly learned skill or knowledge in the workplace? How long is the new knowledge your staff have learned retained? When does refresher training need to be scheduled for?
Staff retention – identifying whether your onboarding strategy is working is imperative for future new starters. Do your new starters stay with you? What percentage of new hires left within the first 6 months of employment? How engaged are new starters, with both their immediate team environment and the company at large? Does engagement increase or decrease the longer they are with you? How quickly are they able to consistently attain the KPIs of their role?
Individual & team behavioural change – understanding whether your training has made a positive impact on both the individual learner and their team is essential. Is your team working more coherently because of their training? Is the business running more efficiently?
Goals & targets – record both the individual and team performance against goals and targets at 3,6 or 9 months prior and post learning to monitor the impact of the learning and compare the difference. Have the learners’ behaviours in the workplace changed to reflect the corporate culture and goals? Do any of your learners’ need their skills refreshing?
Intelligence and insight with Transform
Whilst some metrics mentioned above can only be assessed through seeing how your workers perform on the job, an intelligent platform like Transform help you evidence this on the job performance and also can provide you with real-time, tangible data to see exactly what is happening at any time and in any location across your entire business. With all the data pulled into one central location, you can begin picking up on patterns that will help you improve your courses, content, and employee training performance.
We can help with:
Completion rates – taking note of courses as employees complete them is great especially when training is required for legal or performance reasons. You can set up alerts when course completions are due or certain certificates need reviewing or renewing.
Course progress – the beauty of online learning is the freedom of learning at your own pace, however the rate in which employees progress through their training is something to be aware of.
Measuring how quickly your employees finish a course, can give you a sense of whether your workforce is engaging with the subject matter of the course or whether the quantity of complexity of the content is unachievable given their schedules or workload.
Assessment scores – completing a course doesn’t necessarily tell you what your staff have learned. They may have ticked all the boxes without acquiring any new skills. With the Transform platform you can incorporate assessments or interactive quizzes into your courses, so that you can monitor skills and knowledge improvement.
Number of employees who need retraining – data from assessment scores or on-the-job performance can highlight skills gaps which might indicate reason for retraining or underline certain individuals who require additional training to bring them up to speed.
Perceptions of the learning experience – the more engaging and relevant employees find training to be, the more likely they are to invest time and effort in their courses, so it’s important to review whether your employees enjoyed the learning experience. You can measure employee perceptions of training by giving them a quick post-training evaluation survey via your LMS. Ask them questions about the content, user experience, facilitators, and any other aspects of training that might need to be improved.
Staff retention rates – the Transform platform gives you the power to analyse whether you are retaining staff, comparing data such as new starters vs leavers, understanding their average length of service.
What if you have evaluated the quality of your learning and it isn’t working? 3t Transform can help.
We offer bespoke learning solutions so you can boost knowledge retention and ultimately give you a competitive advantage against your peers. With a team of industry experts, SMEs, psychologists, and teaching professionals, we can take a current standard and adapt certain parts to tailor the content to meet the learning objectives that are aligned to a specific job role, project, or work site.​
Explore our learning technologies here and maximise learner engagement and knowledge retention.
A key takeaway from this blog is the importance of using your data to your advantage. The right training metrics can serve to validate the impact of your training programmes, but they can also drive the development and implementation of more effective training solutions.