If someone asked you what your learning and development programs do for your business, would you have an answer ready? What about what it does for your employees? Most business leaders can explain the purpose of employee training programs, but few have the data to support their answers. Knowing how to track employee training makes all the difference.
Eighty-four percent of employees expect their employer to provide the training and education they need to stay up-to-date in their industry. Employers are expanding their training budgets to meet these needs. But 73% have no framework in place for measuring learning success. Perhaps this is why 65% of executives believe their employees are very satisfied with their company’s L&D programs, while only 32% are actually satisfied.
Without a system to track learning success rates, you cannot know how well your training program works. You also can’t see what you can do to improve it.
Wondering how to track employee training in the best way to optimize your L&D success? Here, we’ll talk about:
- Reasons why you should track employee training
- The best metrics for tracking training initiatives
- How to track employee training
Why should you track employee training?
The most common reasons business leaders and HR professionals track employee training progress are to calculate ROI or to meet compliance regulations. While there’s no doubt these are essential business functions, your training data has the potential to do more. By tracking specific key performance indicators (KPIs), you can also use your data to improve the employee learning experience and L&D outcomes.
Your employee training data can take the guesswork out of whether your training efforts are meeting your employees’ expectations. It can even clarify whether learning progress aligns with your business objectives.
Here’s what you can do with employee training progress reports.
Identify knowledge gaps
Data ranging from participation and course completion to post-training assessment scores gives you insight into how your employees are interacting with training materials. They also display how much employees’ skills improve due to training. If employee performance fails to improve as expected after training, you can pinpoint areas where training content falls short.
Improve employee training programs
When you combine hard data like performance metrics with employee feedback about training activities, you can learn more about how your employees feel about the training modules available and how well the training courses help them advance their business knowledge. Direct answers from questionnaires and surveys can also help you gauge employee engagement. Then you can learn more about the types of training that work best.
Calculate ROI
If you currently calculate the ROI of your training programs for your financial records, you may be wondering what this data has to do with improving L&D outcomes. But for most businesses, this calculation is the one that holds the highest level of importance. If training programs improve the company’s bottom line, they’re worth the investment.
As such, this calculation has the biggest impact on your future training budget. It also shapes how you can improve overall employee performance with effective training programs. ROI calculators can help you effortlessly track and report the business value of your employee development programs.
What training metrics should you track?
Unfortunately, understanding the ‘why’ behind tracking doesn’t give you much insight into how to track employee training. The KPIs and metrics you use to gauge your employee training efforts will play an important role in the information you gather.
These are some key metrics you should consider tracking to gauge the effectiveness of your L&D programs.
Completion rates
For mandatory courses, like compliance training, you need a 100% course completion rate. However, not all development programs are mandatory. When online training or scheduled events in a classroom setting don’t yield high completion rates, you need to know why. By analyzing dropout rates, you can gain insight into why learners leave. For example, poor scheduling or insufficient resources may make the program challenging or impossible for busy employees to stick with.
Employee engagement
Most business leaders are familiar with the importance of employee engagement in the workplace. But did you know that learner engagement is equally essential when it comes to effective learning? Engaged learners who are invested in the program are more likely to retain the information over time. They’ll also use what they’ve learned in the workplace.
Consider the importance of knowledge retention for new employees. It’s estimated that employees who go through a successful onboarding process are up to 18 times more committed to their workplace and feel more confident in their roles. An engaging training process can play a major role in onboarding success.
Pass/fail rates
Training completion means little if learners don’t gain usable information from training sessions. Employee training should align with business goals such as improved productivity, increased sales, better customer service, or using new tools. By conducting pre- and post-learning assessments, you can establish how much your training courses teach employees. If pass rates are low, it’s time to examine your program. Determine why it fails to deliver the knowledge it’s designed for.
Employee performance
When used for cross-skilling, upskilling, or improving satisfaction metrics, how your employees use their new skills in the workplace will play a pivotal role in measuring learning success. By using KPIs to track employee performance before and after training, you can determine if training programs achieve their goals.
How to track employee training
As with other business objectives, your tracking system needs to be efficient and cost-effective. The tracking tools you use for measuring training KPIs can streamline the process and improve your insight into your training efforts. While tracking training progress manually requires a lower cost investment, automatic tracking through specialized employee training tracking software is typically more efficient.
These are the three most common ways to accurately and efficiently track training success.
Learning Management System (LMS)
Your LMS already plays an important role in managing training content and delivering training materials to learners. A comprehensive LMS platform can also help you gather and analyze essential training data related to the activity that occurs within the platform. An LMS is an end-to-end solution for internal staff training. High-performance LMS options can automate repetitive tracking tasks such as gathering data, grading, and processing statistics.
With the right LMS, you can perform a self-assessment to measure your learning program against benchmarks and add depth to the types of analysis performed with your training data. The results enable you to gain insight into employee engagement levels, completion rates, and impact on employee turnover. Features like survey templates and built-in reporting give you access to vital data about employee engagement and performance improvement. With clear insight into how your employees respond to your training programs, you can eliminate what isn’t working and add new options for better results.
Training Management System (TMS)
If you have a very small business or a scaled-back training system geared toward a single objective, you may think that an LMS goes far beyond your basic needs. Businesses seeking a cloud-based system to track course completion and generate reports may be more comfortable with a training management system or a less complex employee training tracker tool. A TMS enables professionals to track in-person training and e-learning. But it doesn’t have the varied features and learning modalities offered by an LMS. If your goal is simplicity, a TMS might align more with your needs.
Excel and Google spreadsheets
If you’re on a shoestring budget, you may have reservations about investing in a learning portal. While they’ll require a larger time investment and more manual input, spreadsheets can be used to track learning success. Both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets can be used to record training logs and track results.
You may be able to find a template to use as a starting point to organize your tracking requirements. Manual data entry will be required after each training session, and you may find it’s best to have each table rechecked by a second set of eyes to avoid errors.
An efficient tracking system is your pathway to improved L&D outcomes
Without an effective system for how to track employee training, your perceptions about your L&D programs can only be called an educated guess. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to keep employees engaged or result in performance improvements that increase your bottom line. Learning how to track employee training is essential for developing strong L&D programs that help employees advance their careers and meet your business objectives.
When you use your learning platform to gather data and analyze the results of training, you can prove whether learning programs are effective or find ways to improve them. An advanced LMS like Docebo is the most powerful way to track learning and improve L&D outcomes. With optimized survey techniques and built-in reporting, you can gain insight into what’s working and what isn’t to make the most of your L&D programs and improve results. To support your company’s growth and learn more about the importance of ongoing education in today’s workplace, reach out to our team.
