How to Measure Training Effectiveness

To measure training is one of the key components on how a business will succeed. If a training program is proven to be effective, it will definitely yield to positive results, perhaps more than what is desired by the company.  However, measuring the effectiveness of training is one of the biggest challenges of firms today. Training in itself is expensive and adding more components to it may not be a good idea in terms of financial capacity.What may help to reduces cost is to develop several tools which may be classified under business intelligence. These tools will help the company evaluate training and consistently improve its methodologies. This is critical since business needs change. The environment and the type of people who get in the company also change. So how does one person measure the effectiveness of training in a systematic way?Once the trainees go live on production on the floor or operations, their performance will significantly impact the overall achievement of the program. Lack of training or poor training methodology always ends up with employees not able to fulfill their jobs. Metrics should be used to see how effective the training was. It will not be wise say that a training curriculum is good simply because the students or trainees passed the exam. What needs to be done is to check the metrics of these employees and see if they are at par with the expectations of the company.Significantly, an in-depth analysis should be done here. Data per employee should be available and this should not be very difficult to obtain with the kind of technology we have right now. These data will then validate of the training was effective. Findings in the analysis may say that there is a gap in the training system and that there is a need to revamp the process or the curriculum.Performance will significantly tell a lot about training. This does not only concern product training but also job orientation. Many employees out there do not know how they should perform because they do not know what is expected of them. Many employees break the rules because they are not also aware of them. It is therefore wise to terrain employees about the existing policies of the company so they know what is acceptable and not.Another thing used to measure the effectiveness of training is a performance alignment program. What is needed here is to set the expectations of each employee in each department how they will be measured. This sets precedence and makes each employee aware why and what the training was for. It is also generally advised to have a weekly or monthly product knowledge check balance. This may also be done through exams to see if the employees retained what they have learned. This may also be done through actual applications and see if what have been taught is still being applied. To measure training is going to be challenging, precisely because we deal with knowledge retention and behavior.