Best Learning and Training KPIs to Measure Workforce Development

The key to workforce development is knowing how your team develops and learns on the job. Whether it’s training or self-learning, we’ve put together a list of learning and training KPIs that can help you measure your workforce’s growth. 

The most important thing to remember when measuring learning and training is that it’s not just about what you’re measuring but why you are measuring it in the first place. If your goal is to improve the performance of your employees, then measure their performance before and after training. If you want to measure the effectiveness of a course, you need to look at individual employee performance scores, departmental goals, and organizational KPIs. 

Setting learning and training KPIs is challenging but necessary.

What If I Don’t Have KPIs for Training Programs?

If you need to track your learning and development KPIs, now is the time to start. Your training program should be one of the foundational pieces of your onboarding and development program. The best way to start learning and implementing KPIs is to look at what you’re already doing, figure out where you want to be, and then build learning KPIs to get you there.

Start by looking at what your organization already tracks as an indicator of success. If you have a training program but have yet to follow its effect on employee performance or organizational results, it’s time to start. You can use that data as the baseline for future tracking efforts and set goals for improvement over time.

If you’re already working with an LMS, you can go back and find that information and start with a little more data, which can make your KPIs even better. It doesn’t matter how or where you start, just that you do.

The best place to start is with a learning management system that fits your needs. To learn about the best LMS on the market, schedule a demo of Trakstar Learn today.

Training KPIs Examples: What You Can Measure

So what can you measure when setting training and development KPIs? There are many things! One way to begin is by looking at what you want your employees to do with their new skills. If your training directly impacts performance, then you can measure that directly. 

For example, if you train your employees in customer service, one of the KPIs could be how many issues were resolved by customer service agents within 48 hours of being reported versus before the training program was implemented. Another example would be measuring how many salespeople can close more deals with customers after completing a sales training program.

You should reframe some of these suggestions based on what you do as an organization. However, the foundations should all be the same.

E-Learning KPIs

Setting KPIs for online learning is different for a few reasons – almost all good ones. eLearning KPIs are often easier to track if you are working with a good learning management system. Usually, your LMS will help set digital learning KPIs and measure your progress toward them. Over time, the LMS will compare this year’s performance to last year’s, allowing you to set better KPIs for online learning.

Best Learning and Development KPIs to Track

When you start tracking learning and development KPIs, you can start here:

Monitor The Pass/Fail Rate

The first thing to consider is the course pass and fail rate. How many people took the course and passed it? How many failed? Not only are you evaluating employee engagement within the course, but you are also checking how well the course teaches your employees. 

The pass rate gives you a great indicator of how well the course did at teaching your employees. If the pass rate is low, it may be time to change up some things in the course. There may be too many sections of content that aren’t relevant to what you want your employees to learn and focus on.

Monitor Scores

If you have scores instead of pass-fail, you want to know the average score. If you make small changes to a specific course that grades your quizzes, you can tie significant changes in content to changes in scores. 

Many will also use this as a test of the content itself. Are your videos still working? Are the downloads there? If scores automatically drop, it may be time for you to look through the courses themselves to ensure everything is still there.

Completion Rates

Is your workforce interested in taking a specific course? If not, why? If they are, what can you do to improve it? You should look at the completion rate first. If it is low and there are no other indicators of problems, this may be an excellent place to start. 

If you see a high completion rate, look at that course again. What made it so enjoyable? Try to replicate that in other courses.

Incompletion Rates

If your incompletion rates rise, you know you have a problem. The content may be old, stale, and isn’t connecting with your employees. 

On the other hand, if your incompletion rates are high, but you know it is engaging, then the content is likely to be new and challenging. If this is a big problem, try breaking the course into smaller chunks or giving employees some mentoring while they are doing it.

Average Time to Completion

How long is it taking people to get through your materials? Similar to completion numbers, time to completion can be an indicator of successful training. If people take too long to finish a specific course or collection of courses, they could be bored and walk away from their computers. They could also have to go back and watch things again, adding to the time.

If your courses take too long to complete, break them down into smaller chunks or give employees some type of mentoring while they are doing it. If this is not possible, consider redesigning the course materials to be more engaging and interactive.

Retention

This KPI refers to how much your employees remember from training. When creating LMS courses, you need to think: is there a value to this? Do my employees remember what they learn?

If so, how long does it last? If not, what can I change to make sure my employees are learning and remembering?

This is a great way for LMS providers to measure the success of their course creation.

Practical Use of Training

Next, you want to monitor if they remember their training and use it. Corporate training is a requirement in many places so that employees align learning and development with the things used in the workplace.

The ability of your employees to take what they learned and use it in their day-to-day roles is a meaningful learning KPI. Monitoring this can be as simple as checking if they’re using the training in their jobs. If they are, what kind of results are you seeing? Is upskilling successful? Are they more efficient? Do they have fewer errors? Is there an increase in sales? These are all good indicators that your training program is working.

Alignment with Departmental and Organizational Metrics

Many businesses measure organizational success by sales, efficiency, review scores, and more, but training should also be a part of that. How well does your training achieve the goal of improving all of those scores?

Knowing how, when, and why your training contributes to organizational success is vital. If you need more time, start by determining where you want to go, then figure out the steps your workforce needs to take to get there.

Do More With Your Training and Development Data

If you do any kind of training and development at your company, you need a partner. Training is difficult: creating courses, measuring results, and actually understanding what it all means. At Trakstar, our software is purpose-built to keep employees engaged at every stage of talent development. We work extremely closely with HR leaders to identify what they need out of their learning management systems and how that ties into other areas of their jobs.

Our built-in Insights dashboard for Trakstar Learn helps measure course effectiveness and productivity, so you always have the data you need right at your fingertips. Even better, you’ll be able to understand what those numbers mean.

Click here to schedule a demo of Trakstar Learn, complete with Trakstar Insights.

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