How to Measure the Success of Employee Training

Investing in training and development for staff makes good business sense: employees who have up-to-date skills and knowledge are an asset to the organization, contribute to profitability and give your company a competitive edge.

But like any investment, it’s important to be diligent. It’s estimated that around $165 billion is spent on employee training in the United States every year, with the average employee receiving around 30.3 hours of training at a cost of $1,195. Not only does it cost financially, it costs in lost time and productivity – so it really needs to be worth it.

Training and development in an organization will, when effective, result in employees with greater skills and productivity, higher levels of staff retention and an overall improved brand performance. But this can be somewhat intangible, and problematic to measure by “feel”.

Some ways to measure your ROI on employee training include:

Sales: Take a look at what your sales figures are before and after training – if the training has been a success then you should be enjoying boosted sales figures ongoing.

Rate of mistakes being made: Human error happens in every organization, but some errors are more costly than others. If you keep a log of mistakes and errors both before and after training, you can determine whether or not your education efforts are having any impact.

Staff turnover levels: Many studies have found that companies that invest in their employees’ training and development are more likely to keep those employees for a longer period of time. When you introduce regular staff training you should theoretically see a reduction in the numbers of staff who leave your employ. Compare your before and after figures to determine if this is the case.

Quiz staff about their learning: A quick and easy way to determine whether staff have retained the information they received during a training course is to quiz them. A great way to do this is by using DeskAlerts. The software has a quiz, survey and poll module that allows you to create quizzes easily and send them to the desktop of every employee who received the training. You get the results in real time.

Use of manager’s time: Many managers find they are often faced with constant questions from their staff or are asked for advice and support. When staff receive further training they can become more confidence and competent and take up less of their manager’s time. This can be a difficult one to quantify, but surveying managers after their staff receive training can help you determine how much time they spend on this compared with before the training.

Customer satisfaction: Training can help your organization to improve the happiness of your clients. Surveying your customers about their levels of satisfaction is a good idea to do in any case, but you can also do it before and after you’ve rolled out staff training programs to determine if their satisfaction levels increase following training.