How To Measure And Analyze ROI On Your Employee Training Program

How To Measure And Analyze ROI On Your Employee Training Program
Summary: When rolling out an employee training program, it’s essential to know how to measure and analyze your return on investment. The Kirkpatrick Model is a simple, yet effective method used to see the impact of corporate learning across an organization.

Employee Training Program ROI: Measure And Analyze ROI With Kirkpatrick's Evaluation Model

eLearning Return On Investment (ROI) is a calculation of the monetary benefits your organization experiences from delivering online training versus the financial input. It’s used to justify the financial investment businesses put into their employee training program. A method to measure your eLearning ROI is using Kirkpatrick's Evaluation Model [1]. Originally developed in 1959 by Donald Kirkpatrick, the model has been revised a number of times and remains one of the most popular ways to track training ROI. It’s a straightforward and practical approach to assessing how successful your employee training has been. The model has 4 levels - Reaction, Learning, Behavior, and Results - and each one is used to measure different levels of your training success, from your learners’ reactions to the ripple effect of training across your organization. We’re going to explain what each level does and how you can use this model in a pragmatic, actionable way.

eBook Release: How To Accelerate Employee Training And Development: The Essential Guide<br />
eBook Release
How To Accelerate Employee Training And Development: The Essential Guide<br />
Find out how to create a successful training strategy for your business with the help of an LMS.

Level 1: Reaction

How your learners and wider organization respond to your training is a critical metric for measuring its success. It not only opens you up to understand what your learners are responding well to, but it also provides insight into aspects of training that aren’t working or need improvement in your learners’ eyes. With all the information you gather, it enables you to iterate, improve, and safeguard your training for the future. It also empowers you to create a better user experience for your learners. Feedback on your course content is critical as you need to know if your employees are actually getting value from what you’re delivering. It also outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the course content so you can adapt it to better suit your users’ needs. Your LMS reports will also give a clear indication as to what’s working - and what’s not - based on the engagement and completion rates. Look beyond course content too. How your employees find actually using your LMS is central to the learning process. You need to know if they find it simple to use and if it’s causing any barrier to their success. Also ask how they could be better supported throughout the learning process, as this will tell you if they need more time to train, if they’re struggling to find resources, etc. A good LMS will have several handy ways for you to collate your learner feedback. Surveys, course reviews, and forums - these features are invaluable to you when gathering user reactions. Or indeed, why not ask some learners face to face? However you get your snippets of information, it's all valuable in the end.

Level 2: Learning

Next, the learning level helps you identify the true impact of your training. It establishes what your employees actually learned through taking the training. It’s a critical step as it enables you to truly investigate whether your learners are actually learning what you want from the eLearning content. With your LMS, you can easily test whether your employees are gaining the correct knowledge through assessment. Sprinkling exams and assignments throughout courses to determine if course content is performing the way you want. Then, by reviewing pass/ fail rates and instructor feedback, you can assess if the course content works and work on filling any discovered training gaps.

Level 3: Behavior

Post-course completion, it’s now time to measure the impact training has on your employees’ day-to-day role. By assessing behavior, you gain a holistic understanding of the skills and knowledge gained from training and how they are implementing what they’ve learned. Behaviour is a longer investment than the first two levels. You might not notice it overnight, but it helps you confirm the investment that’s been made in training and it gives a substantial overview of how your learners are actually putting their training into action. Behaviour is a little tricky to measure, but not impossible. Again, it comes down to two elements - feedback and reports. Put simply, you’ll need to approach your employees and ask how they’ve used what they’ve learned and how they believe it has impacted their work. You’ll get lots of validation and insight here. Using your LMS reports, you can compare your employees - those who’ve completed the training vs. those who haven’t. You’ll be able to identify performance disparities and how training is really affecting behavior.

Level 4: Results

This is the big one; the one that businesses place the most emphasis on. It measures the overall results you achieve from implementing employee training and development - your number one goal. Again, this is a metric that won’t be measurable immediately. It’s a long-term goal that takes time to achieve. And of course, there is no single method to measure this. It’s purely down to the goal that your business wants to achieve. For example: If your goal was to make your workforce more productive, look at the tasks your organization achieves in a certain timeframe and compare that to the productivity level before training was implemented. For higher retention, review your employee turnover and satisfaction levels. And for faster onboarding, analyze how quickly your new hires were able to successfully perform their role when compared with employees who didn’t receive employee training.

The Real Value Of eLearning

Discovering the real value of your employee training comes from continuously measuring these four aspects. If you listen to employee feedback and take full advantage of your LMS features - reports, surveys, assessments, etc. - you’ll be able to measure, adapt, and deliver an employee training program that helps your business reach its important learning goals. Download the eBook How to Accelerate Employee Training and Development to measure your eLearning ROI  and discover how you can create a successful training strategy for your business.

If you want to dive deep into facilitating the best possible employee training, check out the Make Your Employee Training Robust And Engaging: How To Get The Perfect Balance webinar. It is brought to you by LearnUpon and explains everything you need to know to make your employee training solid and appealing.

References

  1. Kirkpatrick’s Model
Originally published on June 18, 2019