How to Track Employee Training & Measure ROI

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You don’t run your business on rough estimations and hinges, so why should you do so with employee training? Besides, employee learning and development is a business investment on its own – it’s closely tied to your business KPIs and goals, necessitating a portion of your budget and offering a measurable ROI. As such, it deserves your full attention and close monitoring.

In this post, we’ll explore all the benefits of tracking employee training, what data you should look for, and the best tools for the job – along with the pros and cons of each option. Let’s dive in!

4 Reasons Why You Should Track Employee Training

Employee training has numerous benefits for your employees and your business. Employees are happier, more productive, stay longer. With a competent and loyal workforce, your business can thrive. In order to reap these benefits, though, you have to keep tabs on your employee training programs to ensure they’re meeting your expectations. Here’s why:

1. Measure Training ROI

You probably know how much money you’ve spent to deploy employee training, but do you know how much you’ve made as a result? Training ROI is a complex thing to measure, and maybe you won’t be able to measure it with 100% accuracy. However, the more data sources you look into, the better you will be able to evaluate it (more on that in a bit!).

Knowing your training ROI means you’ll be able to manage your budget more efficiently and reallocate your resources as needed. Not only that, but for L&D professionals, proving ROI is essential to prove the value of their work and to secure or even increase their training budget.

2. Address Knowledge & Skills Gaps

Tracking employee training means you will monitor how employees perfom both during the course and on the job. You’ll also get to speak with them directly and hear their thoughts about your training program and the extent to which it has helped them.

This will allow you to identify knowledge and skills gaps and address them effectively with additional learning material, mentoring, or on-the-job training, therefore reinforcing the learning objectives of the course.

3. Comply With Regulations

Compliance and detailed record-keeping go hand in hand. You need to know at any time that all employees have successfully completed their compliance training, when a certificate is due to expire, and that your company overall is on track with the compliance regulations of your industry.

If you’re in a heavily regulated industry, you understand how important compliance is and that it goes beyond fines and penalties. Compliance often involves health & safety, and not abiding or being aware of regulations and best practices can jeopardize the well-being of your employees and the environment.

4. Create More Effective Training Programs

Tracking employee training is multi-faceted – it involves tracking learner performance, evaluating employee performance after the training, getting manager and employee feedback, and more.

This training data and feedback from diverse sources will give you an accurate picture of the effectiveness of your program but also of what’s lacking and what needs to be improved – this is key to designing better training programs in the future and achieving your respective goals.

What Should You Track? 3 Types of Metrics to Ensure You’re in Control

There is a vast pool of information waiting for you, provided you’re up for some digging! Below we share the most common and reliable sources of data to track employee training:

Learning Metrics

Leaning metrics refer to metrics that measure course effectiveness and knowledge retention.

• Completion rates: This is the no-brainer metric that first comes to mind when tracking employee training initiatives. Although superficial, a completion rate will give you a first idea of how engaging your training course has been. Not only that – in the case of compliance training, it will help you ensure there are no weak leaks among your workforce.
• Assessment scores: Individual and average assessment scores will give you an accurate idea of how well employees have assimilated the information and parts of the training they might still feel unsure about.
• Certificates earned: The number of certificates earned is a quick way to check whether all employees have finished mandatory training.
• Engagement with training activities: There are ways, especially if you use a Learning Management System, to monitor learner behavior down to activity level. How much time they spent on each activity, whether they completed a video or not, whether they passed a test on the first attempt, and more. All this will help you understand whether your training course is engaging or not.

Employee metrics

Employee training has been closely associated with pivotal employee metrics, namely:

• Employee satisfaction
• Employee engagement
• Retention

These metrics are the results of multiple factors. It’s hard to identify the degree to which they can be safely attributed to employee training. However, if employees refer to their training experience positively in your employee satisfaction survey, it’s safe to say it has played a significant part.

• Employee performance: Employee performance can be measured in different ways depending on the type of training and is often intertwined with other metrics. For new hire onboarding, for example, it can mean time to productivity. In compliance training, you might need to measure the number of incidents. For job-specific skills training, it can refer to faster turnaround or higher sales figures.
• Behavioral changes: Behavioral changes are tied to soft skills and are evaluated rather than measured. For example, better time management is clearly manifested as timely or faster turnaround for projects (measurable) but also a better life balance and less work-related stress (not measurable).Behavioral changes affect the whole team and not just individual employees. For example, when employees develop conflict resolution skills or when they’re trained in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), there will be less friction in the workplace.Similarly, as employees become more adaptable and resilient, your business will be able to navigate change more smoothly. These traits and skills can be evaluated through performance reviews, observations, and feedback from supervisors or peers.

Business Impact

The most tangible results are expressed in business metrics and KPIs. At this point, it’s worth noting that it’s essential to define your desirable KPIs before deploying training. And it’s almost impossible not to, since usually a business deploys training in order to improve specific business results. Indicatively, some KPIs to watch are:

• Customer metrics: CSAT (Customer satisfaction score), NPS, number of support tickets, churn, CLV.
• Financial metrics: sales, training cost reduction, revenue, and gross/net profit margin.

4 Tools to Track Employee Training

You have more than one option to track and record employee training data with tracking software. Here, we present you with 4 different tools, each one addressing different business needs and training delivery methods:

Learning Management System (LMS)

A Learning Management System is hands-down the most efficient tool to deliver and track employee training, from new employee onboarding to upskilling and compliance training. An LMS enables you to offer learners diverse training content formats (eBooks, PDFs, videos, quizzes) and supports several training delivery methods (synchronous, asynchronous, blended, mobile).

Most LMSs offer built-in report tools that help you stay on top of your elearning initiatives without you having to do excessive manual work. You can see how individual employees, departments, or entire branches perform in a few seconds, with just a few clicks.

LMSs have several functionalities that allow you to monitor several metrics, even in real-time, like training completion rates, individual and average course scores, number of certificates issued, time spent on each learning activity, quiz scores, and more.

Most LMSs have filters so you can monitor only the data you need, and can be scheduled for automatic delivery. Your training records are kept for life in one place, together with all your training material. Make sure you specifically ask your LMS vendor about their reporting system, as some LMSs tend to be either overly complex or offer superficial metrics only, like course completion rates.

Overall, an LMS is the most complete training solution, offering multiple options to monitor learner performance through:

• Surveys
• Learner assessments
• Gradebook
• Certificate management
• Reporting tool

Pros

• All-in-one solution to centralize, distribute, and monitor training
• Content authoring capabilities
• Advanced analytics: insights on course and learner performance
• Integration with workplace tools
• Minimal manual work required

Cons

• It could be expensive if you only have one training course

Need more information about how to pick the right LMS for your business? Download our LMS Guide now, and you’ll learn practical tips to cut through the noise and choose the best LMS for your needs!

Training Management System (TMS)

A Training Management System is a platform that helps businesses organize and streamline instructor-led training and VILT. A TMS undertakes all “housekeeping” tasks, like course scheduling, logistics (for on-site training sessions), learner registration, reminder emails, budgeting planning & forecasting, and, of course, detailed reporting.

Keep in mind that, as opposed to an LMS, Training Management Software doesn’t always have content creation or training delivery capabilities. Therefore, it’s a good option if you implement instructor-led training and need a tool to handle administrative tasks.

Pros

• Advanced analytics, including Business Intelligence
• Automation of admin tasks

Cons

• Only works for ILT and VILT
• Doesn’t support content authoring or delivery; TMSs focus only on admin tasks

Employee Training Tracking Software

Another solution to track employee training progress is to use specialized training tracking software. Employee training trackers specialize in monitoring training and help with admin tasks, like training assignments, documentation, reminder emails, etc.

Pros

• In-depth training reports
• Effective compliance monitoring

Cons

• Doesn’t support content authoring or delivery

Google Sheets

This zero-cost solution can serve as a training log for small companies who are offering few on-site or online training courses or when the pricing of other tracking tools is off-limits for your budget. In such cases, good old Google Sheets or Excel will do the job just fine.

Pros

• Zero cost
• Good solution for small companies

Cons

• Time-consuming
• Requires a lot of manual work
• Limited data analysis
• Not efficient for large-scale training initiatives

To Track or Not to Track?

When it comes to employee training, it’s not a question of whether to track it but how. If you don’t want to juggle between tools, a Learning Management System is an integrated, cloud-based solution to streamline, deliver, and track your training programs.

Our platform, LearnWords, is a user-friendly LMS that supports interactive, engaging learning experiences and automates the most mundane admin tasks. Our platform features in-depth analytics and reports, advanced assessments, built-in surveys, and a certificate builder. Plan your next employee development or business initiative, knowing that your workforce can keep up! Start your 30-day free trial now!

Further reading you might find interesting:

• 100+ Elearning Statistics, Facts and Trends
• The 19 Best Learning Management Systems
• SCORM 101: The Definitive Guide to Choose a SCORM Compliant LMS
• What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?
• The Benefits of Mobile Learning: Unveiling Its Power and How It Works

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