After every employee training, the crucial question arises: “Was the measure successful?” – Answering this question regularly poses challenges for HR professionals. Three key questions will help you measure the success of training in the future.
Whether it’s soft skills, digital competencies, or professional expertise: Knowledge is the most important resource for successful companies. However, measuring the success of employee training is not an easy task. Often, you cannot simply quantify the results of a training: How do you measure higher motivation, better communication, or subtle behavioral changes of your employees? I think you know the problem.
Various tools help you measure the success of your employee training: Questionnaires, tests, and individual discussions are just a few examples. The art lies in using these tools purposefully – while asking the right questions for you, the employees, and your company.
Three Questions
The following three key questions will help you measure the success of employee training more easily in the future:
Are employees learning the right things?
Does learning have positive effects in everyday work?
What measurable impacts does this training have?
Below, I will explain why exactly these three questions are so important – and with which tools you can answer them.
Measure everything that can be measured, and make measurable everything that cannot be measured. (Archimedes)
Question 1: Are employees learning the right things in the training?
What should employees learn at all? The answer is often, “Everything that is explained in the training.” However, that is far too unspecific and therefore hard to measure.
A classic knowledge test on the last training day tells you only something about the short-term memory of your employees. You learn nothing about which content will actually be applied in the long term. In the worst case, only the nice trainer or the good lunch will be remembered – and the valuable tips for more productive work are quickly forgotten.
Even a Happy Sheet cannot answer this question. Of course, it is desirable for employees to perceive the training as valuable or motivating. This emotional snapshot is nevertheless no guarantee for a long-term change.
Suitable Tools:
To measure the content success of trainings, a long-term review of what has been learned is necessary. Especially behavioral changes in your employees often manifest only after weeks or even months. To truly see changes, a three-step approach has proven effective:
1. Assessment of the current state before employee training:
What? – Current knowledge level of the employees and expectations of the training
How? – Through questionnaires and surveys
2. Assessment of the learning state immediately after employee training:
What? – Important core content and fulfillment of expectations
How? – Through knowledge tests, certificates, and Happy Sheets
3. Assessment of changes in the workplace:
What? – Practical application and internalization of the core content
How? – Through questionnaires, observations, and employee discussions
Tip: Creating questionnaires isn’t that easy! In our article series “Asking Right,” you’ll learn how to get the answers you need with the right question types and formulations.
This three-step approach is particularly effective in e-learnings: You can directly integrate questionnaires and certificates into good tools within training processes and evaluate them online immediately – clearly and without a paper mess.
Question 2: Does learning have positive effects in everyday work?
This question may seem superficial in the context of employee training. After all, employees are supposed to absorb and implement knowledge. And that alone should already have a positive effect in everyday work.
What many HR professionals overlook: Employees often provide much more direct feedback on training through their behavior. The success of training is often not only visible in individual employees. It is evident in the whole team, in daily collaboration, and ultimately in the work climate. And we all know: A good work climate is important for the success of the company!
Some examples of how training effects manifest practically in the everyday lives of employees:
Is the mood in the office better after a communication training?
Are there fewer complaints from subordinate employees after a leadership training?
Do employees complete certain tasks faster after a time management training?
Are employees less sick after training on health in the workplace?
Suitable Tools:
Which tools are suitable for you to measure the success of the training depends greatly on the topic of the training. For the examples mentioned above, the following tools are recommended:
Observations or regular surveys of the work climate
Individual or team discussions with direct feedback
Measurement of work speed on training-related tasks
Evaluation of sick days or surveys on individual well-being
Thus, you can measure the success of employee training in relation to everyday work across various factors. These factors are also important for the third question:
Question 3: What measurable impacts does employee training have?
The third question is probably the most important. It deals with the direct return on investment (ROI) for the entire company, i.e., hard facts.
Many HR professionals tend to avoid metrics in the context of training as much as possible – after all, no one likes to hear that their own work might have no effect. A clear statement based on numbers about whether the investment in that specific training is worth it is nevertheless indispensable. Ultimately, metrics also help you assess new employee training or improve existing measures.
To avoid misunderstandings: The impacts on individual employees and smaller groups are, of course, also measurable (see Questions 1 and 2). These measurements often relate to specially designed questionnaires or self-assessments. With a focus on the entire company, successes are measured by corporate-wide metrics.
Suitable Tools for Employee Training:
The success of training is measured by general metrics that reflect the success of the whole company. How and where these are collected varies in each company.
The following metrics can be helpful for you:
Productivity: for example, measured by acquired new customers or produced goods
Cost savings: for example, measured by employee downtime or error rates
Customer satisfaction: for example, measured by processing times or direct customer surveys
Employee retention: for example, measured by turnover rates
Hard metrics like these are especially important in the negotiation of training budgets – however, they should not be the sole measure used in employee training. Because the correlation between training and metric is not always clear-cut.
Conclusion: Measure training success on different levels
All three levels are important to measure the success of employee training: The individual employee, departments or teams and the entire company. Therefore, it’s important to consider all three levels when asking, “Was this training successful?” – for example, with the three questions presented above. The task of a good HR developer is ultimately to answer all three key questions with the right tools.
The best tools to measure the success of employee training:
Surveys and Happy Sheets for the subjective perspective of employees.
Questionnaires and tests to verify factual knowledge.
Personal conversations and observations of changes in everyday work.
Hard metrics to fix all impacts in a corporate context.
We hope that this article has been helpful to you and wish you continued success in the training of your employees!
