The first step in measuring training effectiveness is by monitoring how your recently trained personnel are using their new skills.
If they are using those skills efficiently then that’s a good sign that their education has been effective.
How will you know though, that your employees are successfully applying the skills that they have been trained for?
Key aspects to evaluate in your training program
For example, if you’ve trained your employees to use a new online employee training tracking software or app in their daily tasks, then you can simply look at how often they use these new tools to gain a general idea of the effectiveness of their training.
Observing the application of certain skills on day to day tasks is not an exact process that uses quantifiable variables, but it is a good first step, primarily if you don’t know where to start.
Furthermore, asking trained personnel about how useful their new skills are, or working with their managers to observe their productivity, can give a lot of raw data to any assessment of employee training ROI, which is why you should always start your search there.
Take note, however, that application is not always easily quantifiable. For example, specialized training in emergency procedures is not measurable, except when emergency situations arise, in which case, you’ll only get the results after the event is over.
These non-quantifiable variables are always present in any organization. However, if such factors present a serious problem to your analysis then you can always seek the help of professional researchers, who can help you quantify their value for your data.
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Cost Assessment is Mandatory
The next step in measuring the effectiveness of employee training is by itemizing the costs of your organization’s training program.
For example, how much is the total cost of a particular course? How much does the organization spend on training materials, instructor fees and facility costs? How much did your organization spend on travel and lodging, meals, administration and other miscellaneous expenses? Take all of these variables and sum them up into a single value. That’s the total cost of training within your organization.
Each one of these expenses will have to be taken into consideration and measured against the projected return on investments of the entire training program. More importantly, this data will also let your organization’s leaders know if the training programs are worth the investment, or if they are just a waste of money.
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Benefit Assessment is Imperative
After you have made your cost assessment, your next step should be to calculate the benefits of all employee training and development.
To do this, all of the benefits of training must be converted into quantifiable or monetary values.
This process is easy for such factors as worker efficiency, time management or increased production.
For example, effective time management techniques can be calculated by multiplying the amount of hours saved by your trained trained personnel against their average hourly payments.
Likewise, production efficiency is measured by computing the monetary value of all the extra services and goods produced by your trained personnel after they have undergone training.
The only problem with benefit assessment are the soft benefits, such as higher worker morale or team cohesion, which are generally difficult to quantify, since their actual value to your organization is determined on a case by case basis.
So if you encounter these kinds of problems then you may want to hire outside help or expertise to help you quantify the soft benefits of your organization’s employee training methods.
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Now reckon everything
After you have all of the necessary data, you can now start to enumerate the employee training and development ROI.
This is a relatively simple process, and all you need to do is to subtract the cost of training from the value of benefits.
There are, of course, variations in how ROI is computed, but on a basic level, computing the ROI of employee training is ultimately a cost-benefit analysis, where you basically deduct the cost of training from the added value they give to your organization.
Once you have the ROI for your organization’s employee training initiatives and programs, you can now start the evaluation process.
To do this, you will need to compare the ROI of your organization’s training programs with variables which result in higher employee productivity.
One of the ways to effectively evaluate your training program is with the use of online skill assessment software. Yet another method is the Kirkpatrick Model of training evaluation.
This will give you a general idea of how well employee training has affected your organization’s overall profitability.
Furthermore, you can also try asking the personnel, managers and core employees for their opinions about their training, and whether or not it has helped them to perform their work more efficiently.
If most of your respondents give an affirmative answer then your organization’s employee training programs can be considered a success.
Understand the benefits of the Employee Training to your organization
All organizations want to have skillful, loyal and productive workers, and one of the best ways to achieve that goal is training.
Employee training and development, however, should also be understood in how it benefits an organization, and not just for its intrinsic educational value.
Fortunately, the effectiveness of training and development can be measured in a lot of ways, but what matters at the end of the day are the business goals of your organization, and that should be your first priority above everything else.
How are you measuring your training effectiveness? Share with us in the comments.
