How To Measure if Workplace Training Works

Organizations create training for many reasons. They may want to improve job performance or hope for a positive impact on the bottom line. Or, HR may require training to comply with legal mandates. Whatever the reason, leaders share one aim—to get results that make their training initiatives and investments worthwhile. 

How will you know if training programs hit the target? The answer is simple: Measure it. Organizations can expect great results if they set a high-quality goal. Decide on learning and development metrics that prove training sessions did or did not have a positive business impact. Then, take a look at those metrics before, during, and after the training process. 

While numbers don’t lie, they can mislead. So, it’s critical to measure and target training metrics that matter and avoid getting distracted by metrics that don’t.

Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter 

The first step to measure success is to choose the right key performance indicators (KPIs). It’s tempting to look at completion records or quiz scores as wins. While those metrics inform success, they rarely tell the full story.

For example, let’s imagine Nina, a call service agent, completes a customer service course and scores 95 percent on the quiz. A week later, Nina’s manager, Abel, reviews Nina’s post-call survey results. Abel is alarmed to discover that Nina’s score didn’t improve—in fact, it got worse! 

In this case, it’s clear that measuring completed courses and quiz scores was a poor measure of training KPIs. Instead, the company should choose a metric based on business goals. The team at Nina’s agency measured completion rates. But a better goal would have been to improve post-call survey results by 20 percent. Or, the company could measure how often agents escalate calls to supervisors and set a goal to reduce those escalations by 15 percent. These training KPIs tell a clearer story about how well the training changed agent behavior for the better. 

Keep reading to learn better practices for using your LMS measurements. Plus, get some performance metric examples that work to track training effectiveness.

Tools that help measure training program impact

An obvious starting point for measurements is your learning management system (LMS). Use your LMS to check how learners perform, completion rates, and assessment results. Remember, these metrics should only be a clue in your overall measurement strategy—not an end result. 

Every LMS has different reports, but most allow you to get some view into learner completion and performance. But what can you do with this information? For starters, use these clues to determine your next steps.  

For example, admins can view individual or group-level activity in Reach 360, Articulate’s frictionless LMS. Check out these sample LMS reports and corresponding clues.

Activity reports

Activity reports tell you course completion rates and how long the course takes on average.

• Look here for engagement and comprehension clues. Are learners rushing through training? Are they giving up at the same spot? What might need to be reworked?
• Quiz tracking will show average learner scores. If one question repeatedly gets answered incorrectly, it may be time to rewrite it

Group level reports

For group-level learning, look at hours spent in a learning path or course. 

• Does the timeline match your expectations? 
• If performance is sharply divided, do you need a branching course or an opportunity for some learners to test out? 
• Check the group status. Who mastered the content quickly? Could you task those superstars as on-the-job mentors to poor performers? 

These are just a few example findings to look for in an LMS that go beyond completion and quiz results. The takeaway here is to look beyond the numbers for actionable meaning.

Common examples of KPIs to choose for your employee training programs

Nina and Abel’s earlier example was one of many scenarios for measuring performance. Here are a few more ways companies could track training effectiveness.

#1 Performance data

Another vital source of information is your organization’s tracking system. For the sales team, this might be a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that tracks leads as they’re nurtured through the sales funnel.

One way to better understand the nuances of employee performance is to compare training scores to job performance. For instance, if you recently put your salespeople through sales process refresher training, did the people who scored well in those courses also close more sales? What conclusions can you draw about how well your training upskilled those salespeople?

#2 Time and money savings

If the goal of your training was to save time and money, you’ll want to measure whether the tips and techniques for working more efficiently actually saved time and money.

Try asking people to perform the task they’ll learn about before the training to set a benchmark. Then, after they’ve completed the training, do a post training assessment. Compare the benchmark to the time to how much time they spent on the same task after training. Then, multiply the time saved by the value of that time (e.g., the training cohort’s average salary) to determine how much money your training saved the company.

#3: Increased sales revenue

Let’s say you’ve delivered sales training with the goal of driving more revenue. Start by calculating the average sales totals per day for the enrollees. Have them complete the training. Then, calculate the impact of your training on sales numbers by measuring the average dollar amount of sales per person before and after the training.

Subtract the before numbers from the after numbers to determine how much the sales increased. This can be a dollar amount or a percentage. If the number isn’t as high as you’d like, go back to the training reports to look for opportunities to rework training sections. Then, complete the same set of measurements for a new cohort to compare results. Keep working at it to achieve the revenue goals.

#4 Better accuracy and quality

In some organizations, employee training focuses on increasing accuracy or quality. If that’s a goal for your training, you’ll want to show that employees are reducing their error rates after completing your course. 

For example, let’s say that before training, assembly line workers averaged 15 assembly errors per day. Create a training course that focuses on improving your workers’ accuracy. Pull reports to confirm they’ve completed training and compare the average error amount post-training.To measure the impact of the training, you’d need to subtract the average number of errors post-training from the average number of errors pre-training.

The bottom line: measure smart, train smarter

The days of sending training out and crossing our fingers that it worked are over. Luckily, we have access to lots of data to help make informed decisions about training. The trick is to tie training goals to business goals. Moreover, it’s critical to choose the right measurements to track. Whether it’s accuracy, revenue, or customer satisfaction scores, choosing metrics that demonstrate employees really got better after training is key to training success. 

It’s OK if the measurements aren’t impressive on the first try. The data can guide us to ever-improving results if we pay attention. There’s strength—and massive opportunity—in numbers.