Every year, businesses spend millions of dollars on Learning and Development to train employees while being oblivious to measuring training effectiveness. Large budgets mean a Return on Investment (ROI) is expected but the outcome may not be defined.
‘Was the training worth it?’ This is a key question that will often replay in the minds of business owners. Therefore we’d say, there is a strong need to evaluate training and its effectiveness.
No business would increase its spending budget on employee training without reaping any rewards. Evaluating the effectiveness of the training helps you understand how impactful your training has been and how it is contributing to employee growth while ensuring you a safe ROI.
What does training effectiveness mean?
Training effectiveness is useful to determine the overall result of the training on the learner (employee) and how it supports their performance, thinking abilities, and growth. An organization that seeks growth, in the long run, needs to consider training effectiveness to measure the overall contribution of the learner’s impact on the organization’s ROI.
The aim and objectives of the training need to be defined before the training. Doing so offers clarity and direction with insights on what needs to be measured as well as the process to be adopted.
Why is it necessary?
Every professional needs to demonstrate specific skills for their profile. Training effectiveness offers critical parameters that support organizations to identify and evaluate the competencies of individuals. This in turn helps to identify roadblocks particularly while working with a focus on future goals. It also determines the ROI using which you can gauge whether further training would be supportive or needs to be modified.
An effective training model thus supports improving performance, raises employee satisfaction (boosts their morale), increases productivity, and installs new sets of skills in people while identifying gaps. This also means the top management can choose to focus on tasks of higher priority with their subordinates working well without supervision.
What are the training evaluation parameters?
As we have gauged the effectiveness and importance of training, the next step is to understand the meaning of parameters to measure the level of effectiveness. You can consider training evaluation parameters as the metrics used to understand the impact of the training on the specific learner. These parameters can be specific to the purpose and are entirely quantifiable. These can include course completion rates, percentage of employees to the ROI, and more.
Parameters need to be defined in advance otherwise the objective of measuring them would simply not work!
How to measure them?
Measuring training effectiveness requires you to consider the following points for the process.
- Identify and define KPIs
KPI refers to the Key Performance Indicator. This allows you to specify a quantifiable performance expected from the learner. Any organization can make informed decisions with insights from KPIs. You can consider them to be the key target areas required to track any learner’s progress. For example, an eLearning product may target “X number of signups per month.”
Begin with defining the Key Performance Indicators and their values against which you would be measuring the achieved values. KPIs can also include factors such as profits, conversion rates, and so on.
- Learner feedback
Evaluating training effectiveness also includes getting feedback. This step is useful to know areas of improvement and understand the experience of the training process. Effective training considers the learners’ experience and modifies the process where suitable.
- Interactivity and Engagement
The use of interactivity and engagement is essential to keep learners involved and engaged. Monitor the completion rate and know if learners are leaving any courses unfinished. It also helps to analyze how many have completed the course and their level of understanding of what is being discussed. - Assess them!
Assessments support any instructor to understand the following things about a learner –
1. Has the learner genuinely understood what has been conveyed?
2. Is there any need to modify the content or the process?
3. How much of the information has been retained?
You can conduct assessments through different formats that include gamification of content to bring in a fun element.
Selecting the right parameters
What happens when you’re traveling to a place without a destination in mind? You would probably be roaming in circles!
Choosing the right parameters is essential to work according to the objectives and expected accomplishments of the training. The application of the right parameters defines and gives insights into the success of your training along with areas of improvement. Irrelevant parameters will impact the training effect that will take you further away from the objective.
Importance of evaluating training
Measuring training effectiveness gives you the power to evaluate what you are doing and what steps you need to take for the future.
Its importance is relevant in terms of the gaps to be addressed to ensure learners stay engaged and apply the teachings.
Knowing the KPIs, staying organized, and taking relevant action on the results of the training are important for any organization.
However, measuring training effectiveness may not always be easy considering the time and cost taken to develop technologies to streamline the process. One solution includes using technology that empowers you to make informed choices.
Technology that powers up your training programs while saving time + cost is a boon! Meet Experizer, a no-coding AR/VR authoring tool that offers trackable experiences you can create in minutes. You don’t need to invest in teams to build software, nor spend time figuring out how to track your learner’s progress. Being xAPI/TinCan, compliant learners are tracked using LMS as well as inbuilt systems.
All you need to do is choose a template and begin the creation. With Experizer, you can engage, immerse, and involve learners in the learning content. The use of AR/VR ensures stickiness of the content that learners will simply fall in love with!
Thinking about measuring training effectiveness? Sign up for a free trial to leverage your content to a whole new dimension.