Are the training initiatives at your organization meeting stakeholder objectives? Improving employee performance? Showing measurable success rates, based on goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)? If not, there are five “usual suspect” areas where you can make improvements that will lead to better (measurable) outcomes.
Before we dive in, let’s consider what we mean when we say “results.” When building employee training and development programs, you can measure success in many ways — depending on unique needs, stakeholder objectives, and according to type of training and industry.
Here are the most common metrics used to determine success:
- Completion rates and compliance pass rates.
- Improved productivity metrics.
- Fewer documented errors; waste.
- Reduced customer service complaints.
- Increased confidence levels as reported by employees and management.
These are just a starting point and basis from which to measure outcomes. Your organizational needs can and will vary. But in general, if your learning and development (L&D) team addresses the following improvement areas for training, all of those metrics will improve — and you’ll see improvements in areas set for progress in your programs as well.
Areas To Improve
Here are five areas in which you can improve your L&D programs, with actionable suggestions to help you get started.
1. Collaboration: Does your training include time for working with peers, colleagues, coaches, mentors and management? If not, your employees aren’t getting the guidance they need to be successful. When possible, break up learning into shorter, single-skill or process-based modules. Have an instructor or manager Introduce the learning module, then follow up with time for practice and to give and get feedback. Pair up trainees with a more experienced colleague or provide them with someone to whom they may direct questions.
2. Content: Is your content engaging? Consider adding media, animations, or other graphic enhancements to make your content appealing and on-brand. Whether or not you have time for a full update, you should consider the content’s visual appeal. The right mix of graphic design and text will capture learner attention, while the wrong mix — think blocks of uninterrupted text, for example — will make the learning process harder for your employees than it should be.
3. Assessments: Does your training have assessments built in? These don’t need to be scored tests. Instead, you can provide practice questions that participants may use to self-determine their own level of learning, so that they may set goals and get clarifying guidance for any information they find that they aren’t understanding. These types of activities encourage employee participation and confidence because it builds in encouragement and support to the training. It also builds relationships and trust with management and instructors.
4. Measurement: In this area, we go beyond assessments to discuss collected data points. You can’t improve your training, if you haven’t already established a baseline from which to build and considered how you’re going to quantify your efforts. Start by looking at the tools available to you. Can you access user data from your learning management system (LMS) or other systems? Those are great areas to explore for hard numbers. You can also gather reported baseline information from management and employees. If you’re looking for customer escalation rates, productivity numbers, and certification completions, that information should be available and documented.
5. Pre-training needs analysis and/or performance mapping: This is a first step for development of any new training initiative, but for the purposes of this article we’re outlining it last because this step brings your efforts full circle. When you have the opportunity, you must engage in content curation, review of technology systems, and updates of skills matrices that link desired employee performance behaviors with achievable business goals and objectives. Do it pre-training development, and at iterative steps after training is developed to uncover areas for improvement.
Conclusion
The training and development programs that create the greatest impact are those that include collaboration, quality content, and opportunities for employees to set goals and practice skills. Any L&D team would benefit from determining strategies for measurement based on available metrics before they develop training initiatives, and then revisiting at intervals to make adjustments that improve results.
