The idea of keeping an eye on progress is vital for every business that wants to develop a skilled, motivated workforce. When done right, you will have a robust way to find problems in learning, including knowledge gaps, upgrade your ways of delivering training, calculate ROI, and promote employee development and retention. This article will explore why and how to track employee progress.
Why Track Employee Training Progress?
There are several key reasons organizations should make an effort to track employee training progress:
Identification Of Knowledge Gaps
Tracking training for employees helps you spot where people are struggling to understand concepts or apply skills. For example, training programs for bank employees allow one to customize support and additional training to address those gaps.
Improved Delivery
Analyzing employee progress, engagement levels, and feedback helps you continuously work on the content and its delivery, improving both. You can double down on what works while fixing or removing what doesn't.
ROI Calculation
Solid tracking staff training lets you correlate training and activities with improvements in productivity, performance, and other metrics. They are all united by the same military purpose - helping to calculate the ROI.
Development & Retention
People want opportunities to develop their skills and advance their careers. This is especially important in LMS hospitality software, where
demonstrating your commitment to employee development through training tracking helps boost engagement and retention.
Progress Tracking
When it comes to tracking training, you have a whole world of options. Sadly, there are no perfect free tracking solutions. However, there are the main things you can do to answer the question of how to track employee training in its most direct meaning.
Use The Best Employee Tracking Software
LMS offer robust tracking in an all-in-one solution designed specifically for training management. This option provides the best features but requires an investment.
Excel Or Google Sheets
You can build custom spreadsheets to track training manually. This works on a basic level but becomes labor-intensive at scale or for more advanced features. In addition to picking tracking software or tools, you need to actually collect training progress data. Useful methods include:
Regular Assessments
Schedule assessments to test employee knowledge and skill development through quizzes, assignments, or observations by managers.
Workplace Observations
Observe employees directly applying trained skills on the job and note areas of strength and weakness. Follow up with coaching conversations.
Employee Feedback
Check-in with employees before and after training to gather feedback on content relevancy, operational issues, suggested improvements, and more.
Take Inputs From Supervisors
Managers often have the closest vantage point to judge whether employees are retaining and applying trained skills effectively after returning to their roles.
Ways To Track Progress
When investing time and money into employee training programs, tracking participation, engagement, and outcomes is critical. This section outlines popular options organizations use to monitor progress, each with its pros and cons:
1. Spreadsheets
Manual spreadsheets like Excel and Google Sheets offer basic DIY tracking by logging training data such as attendance, scores, surveys, and manager feedback. This is the most flexible and affordable option, giving you total control to display data on custom dashboards. However, populating and analyzing sheets demands intensive administrative effort without automation. Lack of integration with other systems also restricts data insights.
2. Learning Management Software
Robust LMS platforms integrate training delivery and automated tracking into a single specialized system. Market leaders like Cornerstone and SAP Litmos centralize all learner activity data for sophisticated reporting on participation, engagement, development, and program efficacy. This provides unparalleled visibility but requires significant configuration and user training. LMS solutions also represent a major cost investment ranging from thousands to millions based on enterprise scale.
3. Standalone Employee Training Tracking Software
Offerings like TrackStar and AWS Training Tracker focus exclusively on tracking functionality independent of content delivery, keeping features and pricing simplified. You configure integration with your LMS, HCM, or other HR systems to aggregate activity data automatically. This training tracking software eliminates manual tracking effort while still allowing custom reporting. The stripped-down nature maximizes affordability and usability for basic yet powerful insights.
4. All-In-One Training Management Systems
Tools like TalentLMS combine robust LMS portals with added logistical training coordination features for a comprehensive training management ecosystem. This goes beyond an LMS by handling the administration of students, courses, instructors, facilities, equipment and more - essentially overseeing your entire corporate university. The maximum automation delivers turnkey tracking and analytics while removing numerous manual workflows. However, costs and complexity again scale significantly.
Key Tracking Metrics
Tracking employee training is meaningless without a plan for analyzing and acting on the data you collect. These key training metrics provide invaluable insights into the efficiency and effect of the learning.
Time Spent On Training
This basic yet critical metric shows whether people are spending enough time reviewing training materials. Short module completion times likely signal boredom with unengaging content, while employee drop-offs indicate complex or redundant sections. Optimizing course length and continually assessing engagement ensures employees absorb the information.
Course Progress
Monitoring how consistently and quickly employees progress through a multi-part training curriculum reveals problem areas and opportunities for improvement. You can identify sections that repeatedly trip up learners and deliver targeted supplemental training. Comparing cohort progress also allows benchmarking of top and bottom performers.
Course Completion Rates
The percentage of learners fully finishing training programs indicates whether your content resonates and provides value. Low completion signals mundane or redundant modules employees don't deem worth their time. Analyze at-risk groups, specific modules, and other factors behind abandonment to overhaul and promote failing training.
Assessment Scores
Concrete evaluation through quizzes, observed assessments, assignments, and tests quantifies skill and knowledge gains from training. This data diagnoses areas where employees struggle to retain or apply information after training. You can then update content or provide coaching to address weak points. Comparing scores over time and across groups also measures training ROI.
Learning Experience
Employee survey feedback provides qualitative data on training program enjoyability, real-world applicability, support levels, and other success factors affecting the overall learning experience. Positive feedback affirms effective approaches to replicate, while constructive criticism spots poor design choices and barriers to adoption that undermine training goals if ignored.
Soft Skills Change
Unlike technical skills, observing and quantifying soft skill development requires nuance - tracking improvements in communication, collaboration, creativity, and other behaviors over time. Gathering meaningful data relies on careful rubrics, manager observations, and anonymous peer review. The insights justify the effort by diagnosing toxic culture issues and promoting productive training and coaching.
Post-event Survey Results
Post-training participant surveys should gauge what knowledge and skills were transferred into practical workplace application and what missed the mark. Track metrics like subject matter recall, implementation levels of new processes or best practices, and continued obstacles and knowledge gaps. The user-focused findings guide ongoing iterations of training programs. Surfacing actionable feedback directly from employees builds trust and engagement.