Training is a huge industry that continues to grow every year. Educating your employees well helps business grow, it helps with employee morale and can reduce your turnover rate. Not to mention, well-trained employees do their jobs better and that can directly effect your revenues and profits.
But how do you know if your training is working?
Before you start a training program, create a plan to measure the impact after it’s done. And not just immediately, but in the months following an event. Has the material sunk in? Is it useful? Is it making an impact?
You can do things like setting up KPIs before a training. These Key Performance Indicators allow you to see if the training is working by measuring small (or large) goals in employee performance. Many businesses use the Kirkpatrick Model to measure a training’s worth with 4 levels of evaluating post-training performance.
In some cases you will see immediately if your training programs are impactful. A sales rep may close more deals, an auto body shop manager may have less work-place accidents, a salon owner might have more referrals from happy customers. But, sometimes training programs can take a long time to work. If your company is bought by another company there may be a period of transition where new employees must learn new policies, processes and procedures. It can take a long time to make these common practice or habit. Or, a new company culture needs to be established, which can take even longer.
We read a great article from Real Cool Productions that talks about the ways you can assess whether or not your training is working. Check it out here: “Ways to Measure Training Success”.
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