How to Effectively Monitor Your Employees’ Training Progress 

Today, a sophisticated, rigorous approach is the norm for employee training, not the exception.

Every business, therefore, is constantly asking itself whether its training programs are up to scratch. And to answer that question they’re not just focusing on training staff, but analyzing the efficacy of the staff-training itself.

An example of this is the increasing use of monitoring employee progress through training programs.

This article, then, will look at the need for tracking in-training employee progress, which metrics are best deployed for it, and what hardware can best aid trainers for the task as they seek to deliver first-rate training for employees - and the companies they work for.

Why focus on in-training employee tracking?

First, to understand why it’s so important for businesses to monitor employee training, it’s a good idea to understand what companies want to get out of training.

Whatever the sector, industry, or company, a business’s workforce must keep up with best practices, advances and innovations, and mandatory compliance (if necessary). In short, it must keep a business competitive.

To not have to invest in new staff, the answer for most businesses is effective staff training.

For instance, take a utility company focused on improving customer service – you can be sure its priority will be thoroughly training staff to use the latest workforce engagement management software it’s introduced.

As a result, the company will be able to harness the newly acquired skills of its existing staff and save time, money, and resources it would have otherwise spent recruiting people who specialize in that specific tool.

This is just an example showcasing why companies put such a premium on training today – to get the most out of employees, make cost savings wherever possible, and deliver ROI on recruitment.

So, given this uncompromising approach to training, it’s clear that for companies, making sure employees are making good in-training progress is imperative. 

To effectively track employees’ progress during training, let's explore which KPI’s and metrics you should monitor.

Which KPI’s and metrics should you monitor? 

So much for the theory, but what does monitoring in-training employees involve?

The precise needs and expectations of training depend on a company’s line of business, training specifics, and the number of learners.

In general terms, there are two common metric types that program organizers will want to keep their eyes on throughout the training.

Course completion metrics

Senior staff need to know how many employees have successfully completed the training. Yet, being aware of completion rates on individual courses during the program is equally as necessary.

Without this metric, trainers won’t be able to track learners’ progress. For instance, among remote workers training for a new remote desktop app for Mac, to work out who’s ahead and who’s behind, the trainer requires completion rates.

It ought to be pointed out, too, that this metric is essential for tracking compliance training progress. That’s because when employees require training for compliance purposes, completion/ success by specific deadlines is mandatory.

For instance, a company that manufactures airplane parts can’t afford any staff to fall significantly behind, so risks a completion rate below 100%. If an individual doesn’t complete compliance training, their company won’t.

Compliance training managers need to be on top of employee progress every step of the way.

Pass and fail metrics

Naturally, we’re talking about the pass/ fail data for individual courses, tests, quizzes, and action-based learning activities here rather than pass/ fail data for an entire training program.

Who’s progressing well, who’s scraping by, and who’s lagging behind? This metric measures how employees are doing throughout the training – and so, may also help inform the efficacy of the training.

For instance, should the data demonstrate consistently very high pass rates for an HR training quiz, it could indicate all employees are well-trained.

Equally, though, it may mean that the quiz isn’t rigorous enough. If, for instance, the HR team’s questionnaire starred questions like, ‘what is HRIS?’, the quiz should be considered too simple. 

Considered analysis of this metric, therefore, may help identify how and why the approach to individual program segments should be altered to improve employee progress – and the program’s effectiveness.

LMS – the standard tool for trainee monitoring

Now, employee training tracking, in practice, isn’t easy. The bigger the business, the more of a challenge it can be.

Because of this, more and more companies are turning to digital hardware to help them out. In particular, a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) can prove a worthy investment.

This software solution can significantly help track learners’ progress throughout their training. Similarly, you might say, to the help provided by a software virtual agent for customer service representatives.

An LMS, therefore, specializes in:

Automated work

Designed to automate routine processes, such as data gathering and processing, an LMS can simplify and speed up trainers’ admin duties.

The more intricate a training program, the more time-consuming the admin work. For instance, which learners achieved which steps towards compliance? Which learners failed those steps?

Collaboration tools can also play a crucial role in streamlining these administrative tasks, allowing trainers to work more efficiently.

Through its data gathering and processing tasks, an LMS instantly answers these questions, collating and neatly displaying the information for users to consume.

For human beings, such work tends to take up hours of their working week; for an LMS it takes moments.

Analyzing data and compiling reports

Moreover, by drawing on, filtering, customizing, and distilling all the important data uploaded to it, an LMS will create automated reports on learners’ progress.

Such reports contain details on a trainee’s abilities and test results, as well as comparisons and contrasts with other learners’ progress.

Storing  records

Finally, irrespective of how many employees undertake a training program – whether it’s 20 or 2,000 – a capable LMS will document in-progress training records for every employee, as well as the details of their previous training/ compliance record with a company.

In short, it will function as a central depository for vast volumes of training materials and data, any of which should be retrievable within seconds.

Leverage the functionality of a TMS

A similarly used software tool is a training management system. A TMS, as it’s referred to, is ideal for training programs but from an instructor-driven perspective. Unlike an LMS, then, which offers all-around admin aid and is more trainee-focused.

So, a TMS can assist training administrators in conceiving and organizing programs. In many ways, this tool’s functionality resembles that of a customer relationship management system (CRM).

If that makes it sound like a TMS won’t be much use for trainers wanting help to monitor and report on learners’ progress during the training itself, bear in mind that a TMS would likely be used to draw up and manage a program’s budget, logistics, and course plans, and to create reports for senior leaders.

All of this means the data stored on a TMS, as well as its functionality, would be leveraged by trainers, in conjunction with an LMS, to monitor and report on trainee progress.

Want to keep costs down? The spreadsheets solution

Learning-specific portals like an LMS or TMS doesn’t come cheap. Owing to budget constraints, some businesses won’t be able to fork out for either, let alone both. So, what else could a trainer for, say, an omni-channel call center use to make their life easier?

Well, today’s high-quality spreadsheet solutions might well meet the challenge. Both Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets, for instance, are brimming with useful features.

They both provide an impressive dashboard, which would enable quick, easy, and effective uploading of details for the trainer’s courses on predictive dialers and social media use. These details could be customized and updated as the courses progress.

Of the two tools, Excel boasts better functionality. Yet, unlike the former, Google Spreadsheets can be used by multiple stakeholders, which may be favorable for complex, larger-scale training programs.

Get the metrics and tools right for effective trainee-tracking

As more and more companies worldwide are getting more serious about their employee training, the need to make sure that training is as effective as possible and worth its cost per employee has increased.

This has put pressure on the efficacy of training programs at every step of the way, in turn leading to the rise of in-training employee tracking.

Yet, while it may, on the surface, sound like a time-consuming, extra burden for trainers, monitoring employees’ training journeys needs to be anything but.

By giving the task consideration and focus and identifying the correct metrics (course completion rates, pass/ fail rates, mandatory compliance deadlines, and more), trainers can save themselves the trouble by expertly measuring how well trainees are coping as their training proceeds.

Moreover, trainers can save themselves a lot of time by turning to a high-quality LMS or TMS (or even, to a lesser extent, Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets) for data gathering and processing and report creation. Thereby ensuring that in-training employee tracking delivers for employees – and the companies that employ them.

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