Realizing the importance of employee training programs in the early stages of growing your business makes a great difference simply because employee training contributes to shaping your culture as a company.
With the varying challenges you may face as your business continues to run and grow, you will be able to appreciate having a reliable team with you. Having a reliable team is a product of a lot of factors and one of which is the kind of training programs you have made available for your employees.
Making sure that employees get to be trained and equipped with the necessary skills in the workplace is a must. About 40% of employees leave their new jobs within just a year of working if they feel that the training they receive is not enough.
Importance of Tracking Employee Training
In terms of crafting a training plan, it is critical that you have a plan in place for tracking the progress of the employees before, during, and after training.
To emphasize, you would like to know if an employee training program is effective not only after the training was conducted, but also while it is being conducted.
A survey conducted by LinkedIn asserts that a rough estimate of 6,600 professionals found out that 1 out of 5 training professionals do not measure engagement, although this is crucial in the quality of retention and learning in a certain training program.
The need to track employee training in different areas will ensure that there is an effective transfer in the acquisition of the different learning facets. In this article, get to know some of the ways on how you can track employee training.
Enhancing Employee Engagement
In tracking employee training, looking at engagement is really a must.
As a trainer, make sure to effectively craft a training program that is engaging, inclusive, and informative. In addition, make use of employee engagement training that is relevant to the different problems posed in a certain company.
With the data on employee engagement, you can enhance the strategies you use for motivating your people and come up with better ideas on how to approach training methods and materials.
Providing Opportunities for Improvement
Tracking employee training is crucial especially in looking for different opportunities that will allow the trainees to continuously improve as employees.
To conduct opportunities for improvement, here are some of the questions you can just simply consider:
- Are trainees able to retain several pieces of information?
- How long will the employees finish a specific training program?
- Is the content easy enough to pass the training program?
- Does the training program allow employees to effectively interact with other employees throughout the training period?
The answers to these questions will pave the way for unlocking the hidden opportunities for improvement among your people.
Sense of Compliance
You want employees who will honor your company policies.
Training employees can help achieve that goal and ensure that employees stay alert and cooperative when it comes to following the policies.
Employees get to feel that they are on the right track because despite the numerous training sessions they are going to attend, they feel a sense of accomplishment because aside from the situation that they get to attain the objectives in the training session, they also get to honor and submit to the policies of the company.
Tools for Tracking Employee Training
Tracking employee training is challenging. It can also become too complicated that you would get discouraged about the idea. However, you can first explore the necessary techniques.
Effectively monitor the different learning activities that should be distributed among the employees. Use software applications that can work as tools for tracking employee training.
To use these digital tools, here are some of the things you can consider as a starting point in tracking employee training.
Training Management Systems
Source: ispringsolutions.com
Training Management Systems (TMS) can be your main tool in effectively tracking the performance of the trainees. These systems are often used to design, organize, and maintain training programs on a bigger scale.
In general, training providers can use these systems to manage the commercial aspects of a training program. Most TMS gives you access to the following features:
- training dates and sessions
- registrations and payments online
- promoting courses
- communicating with trainees
Brought by the current pandemic situation, trainees are restricted to attend conventional training sessions; hence, utilizing training management systems will help you a lot as a trainer.
A training management system is a packaged form of a training session where the trainees also get to see the announcements or other important communications, especially when there are changes emerging in a certain training session. In addition, the training management system also consists of a messaging tab where users get to interact with other trainees and the facilitator of the training program.
In addition, a reliable training management system may also consist of a progress chart and a grade book where the facilitators and trainees get to see where the trainees are currently at and they get to see on their current track whether they have achieved the targets of a certain employee training or not. Indeed, the systems are designed to conduct and monitor training with ease.
Through the Training Management Systems, the employees get to easily track their own performance as well. If in any case that they get a low percentage of passing, they can still retrieve the learning materials, even though the training session is already done. In this way, they get to easily track the necessary materials if they need to access it.
Google and Excel Spreadsheets
Using Google and Excel Spreadsheets can help as well. Through these software, you can input some data from the results of the performance monitoring in the duration of the training.
For example, you may take note of the time it took for a trainee to finish a course, the scores the trainee got, or the numeric data about the individual. You can also create a checklist where you can just check the activity once the trainee is already done accomplishing some tasks in the checklist.
To do this, make sure to be familiar with the different features of such spreadsheets. You can rely, however, on Google and Excel spreadsheets being one of the most user-friendly software in tracking employee training.
The best thing about these tools is that they allow collaboration and real-time syncing.
Tips for Tracking Employee Training
Trainers are expected to multitask when conducting training. Often, this results in a lot of issues when it comes to tracking employees who are under certain training programs.
To be guided in the process, here are some of the things you need to consider.
Identify Important Metrics
If done right, training can be measurable.
To start with, make sure that as a trainer, you get to identify the different areas you need to consider in tracking employee training. This may be in the form of the total hours of training, scores incurred per training session, engagement among employees, effectiveness of certain training, or ROI.
According to Training Industry, here are the metrics to check when tracking employee training:
- Number of employees who were able to complete training
- Rate of those who passed over those who fail in knowledge assessments
- Efficacy of training solutions for the different functions
- Rate of change in behavior as a result of training
- Impact of training solutions on Key Performance Indicators
- Ratio of financial return
Communicate Results to Your Trainees
Results must always be communicated in a form of feedback.
The participants in a training program do not obtain progress in a certain training program if they themselves do not get to track their progress and be aware of the results of your monitoring.
The data gathered must be useful in driving behaviors crucial to the betterment of the employees. Be transparent and you will certainly inspire quality change.
Gather Feedback From Trainees
As a trainer, do not just facilitate the activities plainly. You must also gather feedback from your trainees.
Gathering feedback from your trainees is also one of the most straightforward ways to assess how the trainees performed or behaved in the training.
Simply giving out evaluation forms or surveys in different facets of training can help you make sure that you still get to monitor what areas you are going to improve. You can also use Excel or Google Sheets to gather feedback from trainees.
Ultimately, whatever data you will be able to gather, use such data to improve your training programs.
