When it comes to hiring new employees, of course a company has to go through some form of onboarding training. In fact, most companies do have employee training programs even for the existing employees to keep sharpening their skills and also widening their skillsets. Now, when you are running some programs, of course you would like to know how effective they really are. I mean, what would be the point of training your employees if you are not going to evaluate their effectiveness.

Why do we measure training effectiveness?

For starters, we know that evaluating training effectiveness gives a company a clear picture of what the employees know and also identifies areas that can be improved. What’s more, measuring training effectiveness has also been known to boost employee retention and engagement. This is why we are so focused on ensuring that we understand how effective your programs are, giving us ideas on how to tweak them to make them better. We want to know if the employees can demonstrate a positive impact from the programs through improved productivity as well as overall skill management.

How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your company’s training programs?

Identify specific KPIs – identifying your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is the very first step towards assessing the effectiveness of your training programs. Choose data points that are critical to your organization, as they are the indicators you will use in determining whether the training is working or not.

Administer a pre-training assessment – it’s good to carry out an assessment before employees start a new program. The assessment informs what the employees know and what they don’t. This way, it would be able to measure the effectiveness of the training much easier.

Monitor during training – you don’t need to wait till the end of the training to get the feedback. Instead, you can check in with your employees during the training. Survey how the employees are responding to the program, as it will help you establish if there are adjustments that you need to make to maximize effectiveness.

Measure engagement – employee engagement is one of the crucial metrics you will need to look at when assessing the effectiveness of the program. You need to figure out how the employees are reacting to the training. You will also want to evaluate the different modalities of training to determine the most engaging.

Assess retention of knowledge – give the employees the same assessment they took before training to assess knowledge retention. This will help you identify what the employees have learned.

Measure results – lastly, measure the results of the training based on your selected KPIs. And if you don’t see results right away, don’t stop training. Ongoing training will produce results in the long run, more so reduce common mistakes employees make in their work.

Benefits from a good training program

More productivity – as employees gain more skills from the training, it sets them up for success in their specific roles. This will in turn boost their performance, making them work more effectively and efficiently.

Improve on weaknesses – training not only sharpens the employees’ skills and knowledge on the job, but it also builds their confidence in their individual abilities. This will in turn ensure that they improve on their weakness over time.

Increased job satisfaction – training programs make employees feel like they are valued and are part of a supportive work environment, meaning that they will be more satisfied with their roles, and will make them approach their duties with more confidence.

Final word

Now that you understand the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of your training programs, plus how to assess a training program, now it should be the perfect time to take a closer look at current training efforts and make sure that you make the necessary adjustment to maximize their effectiveness.