Every year, companies spend a lot of money on employee training but still ask: Can I be certain that this training brings a true business benefit? A proper measurement of the corporate training is more than just attendance and completion logs. It looks at whether learning has helped employees become more skilled, whether these new abilities result in better performance at work, and whether the training supports company goals.
The latest reports from the field suggest that companies that deploy the use of data in their training are more aligned with business and have better talent development decisions. Leaders want more results from their companies and so, measuring training outputs has become an integral part of each winning Learning & Development (L&D) plan.
How Corporate Training Measurement Is A Must
Organizations may put a lot of money in learning programs but only focus on the minimum metrics such as learners’ satisfactions or a completion of a course. Although these indicators may be good for the learner but they hardly prove impact on business.
By having a solid training measurement strategy, organizations:
- Determine how good the learning programs are
- Spot the workforce skill weaknesses
- Get the future of learning more learner-oriented through analytics
- Join the business priorities with training programs
- Prove the worth of investing in employee training programs
Organizations that pick and use the right measures are those who are successful in continuously improving their learning programs and extracting maximum value from their investments.
Fundamental Metrics for Determining Training Success
Incorporation of learning analytics in the operations of the organizations that are leading the pack and their company wide performance numbers is one of the key ways of doing it.
Employees’ Participation and Engagement
Analyzing course enrollments, completing ratios, assessments results, and learners’ comments would give you a better idea of how much involvement or participation the learners have given to your program at different stages throughout your training.
Development of Knowledge and Skills
You will find out how much learners have learned after they have passed through training by quizzes, exams, certifications or through checking how the company skills have evolved from the start until the end of training by way of competency evaluations.
Work Behavior
Only when the employees begin applying the new information in their jobs, training will start delivering its value. Getting managers’ feedback about a job’s accomplishment, and employee development can give us an idea on whether the training of a subject has helped change the employee’s job behavior.
KPI’s of the Organization
It is essential to see how the training affects the business in terms of the performance measures such as higher productivity, more sales, better customersatisfaction, fewer compliance risks, or better operations.
Learner Training Investment
By learning of how and why they invested in training compared to tangible changes in the business, organizations can learn about the economic value that their training initiatives have brought and plan accordingly for their future investments, which are more productive.
The Main Tools to Assess the Impact of Learning Program
Many companies follow the Kirkpatrick Model, as a method for measuring different aspects at each of the stages of trainings:
- Learner Reaction
- Knowledge Level Increase
- Change of Behavior
- Business Results
In fact, several companies combine these with the Phillips ROI Methodology which enables them to do financial calculations to find out the return that their training generates.
These models give a methodical way of reviewing not only the quality of learning delivered to employees but also the results of those learning activities with respect to organizational performance.
What Do Best Performing Organizations Do Differently to Improve Their Training Measurement?
Your results will definitely go up if your company:
- Sets down clear measurable training objectives right from the initial phase so that it is clear to every stakeholder involved what they expect from the training.
- Links the training key performance indicators with the strategic objectives of the company.
- Uses learning analytics and keeps an eye on the learners’ performance all the time, not just at one time after the training.
- Gathers views both from the learners and their managers.
- Carries out the analysis of the results periodically in order to improve the training process.
In one such organization, the company found out through using the performance monitoring system of the online employee learning platform in addition to the managers’ observation that although the people were quite aware of the content they had learned they did not have any opportunity to develop the skills they had learned. The implementation of specific coaching sessions led to a massive increase in the number of instances where the people were able to apply the knowledge to the actual jobs, without rethinking that the training program has to be completely redesigned.
Summary
Measuring corporate learning is not only the task of showing that participants got some training but much more is the job of showing the tangible benefits of that training. Tracking the effectiveness of learning, the outcomes of learning, the assessment of skills, the metrics of the evaluation of a training programme and the return on investment (ROI) of employee training, gives companies all the information they need from a business perspective to enhance the work of their employees and at the same time they also have the ability to make informed learning investments. A proper training measurement strategy will change the perception of the training budget from a cost centre to a quantifiable source of the company’s success.
