You're a great runner—but you want to run even faster. You clock time, using a smartwatch to monitor performance, so your incremental improvements are accurately measured. Although there's no fancy watch to measure training effectiveness, there are other methods to do so. Check out these four metrics to see if you have a healthy pulse on achieving your learning and development and business goals.
1. Employee engagement
Better customer service, sales wins and compliance with health and safety regulations: What do all of these have in common? None can be accomplished without your employees continually developing the right skill sets. To do so, they must be fully engaged in your training content. To track engagement, start by measuring response rates for online courses. If employees are slow to open and complete lessons, evaluate your LMS's usability and the lessons themselves. Learning should be intuitive and relevant. If it's not, you'll make learning a chore and lose your audience as a result. Another way to measure engagement is to track how frequently employees post comments and leave reviews. Monitor progress through quizzes and the percentage of users earning online certifications. Offline, ask managers to survey team members about their training experiences. Treat feedback like you would a Net Promoter Score. Anyone who isn't a promoter is a detractor, so strive to win over not only your critics, but also those who are indifferent.
2. Productivity
A thoughtfully planned L&D strategy helps new hires hit the ground running. According to Glassdoor, it can take up to eight months for a new employee to become fully productive. By improving your onboarding training, it's possible to speed that timeline by 34%, according to Urban Bound—a difference of about four months on average. In an on-demand world where information and entertainment are a click away, mobile and microlearning are keeping pace by allowing workers to improve themselves quickly and at any time. This should result in more immediate boosts to productivity. To examine this vital measurement, integrate your LMS with human resources information system (HRIS) software that tracks and manages employee time. When employees begin to complete tasks faster, you'll know your training is making a difference. For sales reps, you can directly tie L&D to the bottom line by reviewing specific metrics like number of sales orders secured and the actual value of sales made post-training.
3. Employee retention
The financial costs of turnover are well-documented, but don't represent the full picture. Stress on your current employees after a departure may impact individual contributions to company goals. When a coworker leaves, temporary hits to morale, productivity and service quality are a real threat.
An effective LMS can improve employee retention and ease the stress of departures, according to Mercer's 2019 Global Talent Trends report. Employees value leadership that invests time and resources into their career development, so when they are provided with upskilling and reskilling opportunities, they're more likely to stick around.
To measure and improve employee retention, analyze the factors cited for employee departures in exit interviews, build courses to address the most noticeable trends, then compare turnover rates after rolling out those courses.
4. Overall job satisfaction
Finally, look at your LMS reporting to gauge employee satisfaction. You want your team to be happy with your L&D, and assessment reports indicate how well your LMS is received. Additionally, competency metrics offer insights into how much material was retained or if it flew in one ear and out the other. Effective learning technology gives employees the confidence they need to excel in their jobs and provide value to your company and clients. With features like social commenting and user-generated content, they're also more likely to collaborate and innovate with the support of their peers, giving you an edge over the competition. Learning is a marathon, and you can lead the pack by evaluating training effectiveness. If after measuring these metrics you identify hurdles to optimal job satisfaction and productivity, you'll now have all the data you need to course-correct for success.
Discover more ways to boost learning and development are your organization. Read this "Doing Digital Learning Right" white paper for more insights and actional tips.
