12 Training Metrics

There are different training metrics are specific, measurable criteria that you can use to measure the effectiveness of your training programs. Comparing, measuring, and tracking your training is a great way to see if your learners are effectively taking in new knowledge and contributing to organizational goals. In this article, you’ll learn more about common training metrics and how they can help you identify key success factors.

1. Course Enrollment Data

The first training metric on this list is course enrollment data. As its name suggests, this metric determines the number of learners enrolled in a course. It can be used to improve how you communicate the training to your employees, especially if you’re trying to get a higher participation rate. You can notify your employees about your training program in different ways such as forwarding invite links through email, giving announcements during meetings, or sending messages to your teams. Observe and see which method is more effective in getting more sign-ups. 

You can also determine if your training course is effective with your course enrollment data. For example, if you consistently get a smaller number of employees to join your training, then you might want to consider shifting from in-person training to an online learning environment. You can also do small things to improve course enrollment, such as encouraging leaders and managers to promote the training course to their teams.

If you’re not outsourcing your training, there are several software as a service (SAAS) and learning management systems (LMS) that can keep track of this data. SC Training (formerly EdApp), a free mobile learning platform for up to 10 users, has features that make tracking training metrics easy. The most recommended one is its User Groups feature, which allows you to put together teams for specific training sessions, and easily communicate their training sessions using push notifications and invite links. You can also easily integrate this M learning tool with your other systems using xAPI support. 

If you’re fairly new to human resources, SC Training (formerly EdApp) also HR compliance training courses and etiquette training courses to help you learn more about how you can be more effective in your role.

2. Learner Engagement

Learner engagement measures the amount of time and effort learners invest into the learning process. This can be measured through engagement statistics, like the time spent on courses or the number of times an assessment was taken. You can also combine this with other metrics that will be covered in this list like course completion rates and training experience satisfaction to further gauge how learners interact and engage with the learning content. 

SC Training (formerly EdApp) also gives you access to an analytics reporting tools that provide you with specific information like lesson completion, and general data like log-in dates and times. With SC Training (formerly EdApp), you can also use gamification to improve your courses and increase your employees’ retention, turning mundane lessons into interactive mini-games and quizzes. This strategy can help you convince your learners to regularly engage with their learning content.

3. Devices Used

If your organization provides elearning or online learning, then keeping track of what devices are being used can help you further optimize your compliance training programs. By knowing the preferred device of your learners, you can make your training more user-friendly and better customized for their devices.

When employees are free to access their content on their preferred device, they’re more likely to engage with the content. That’s why it might be good to consider an LMS platform that supports cross-platform functionality, which allows users to access content from different devices anywhere and anytime. 

4. Assessment Pass Rates and Scores

Assessment pass rates measure how many learners pass or fail a course taken. If your pass rates are unexpectedly low, you can try to examine what caused it. Were questions unnecessarily detailed? Do learners have enough time to learn everything required of them?

If you want to encourage spaced repetition as a way to improve assessment performance, you can use SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s Brain Boost feature (by request only). This tool automatically recreates lessons based on previously-learned material and focuses on content that wasn’t completed successfully before. This allows key concepts to be fully embedded into your learners’ long time memory as they repeatedly learn the content. 

SC Training (formerly EdApp) also supports score leaderboards (by request only) that make the top performers visible to everyone. This feature can encourage friendly competition among your learners, motivating those who are performing well to stay consistent and those that are falling behind to do better. If everyone’s consistently producing great results, then your organization will enjoy a better and healthier bottom line. 

5. Course Completion Rate

Course completion rates give you an indication of how much of the course a learner completed. You can have a large number of employees enroll in a course, but if the completion rate remains low, then you might need to encourage more engagement and interaction with their training. 

You can use mobile learning strategies or look for microlearning apps like SC Training (formerly EdApp) to improve your training metrics and make your training more engaging. Microlearning is all about taking large amounts of learning content and breaking them down into smaller, more digestible chunks of information. By breaking down lessons into more manageable sizes, your learners are more likely to finish their courses. 

6. Learner Drop Off Rate

Learner drop off rate is an indication of how many learners started a course but didn’t complete it and decided to leave the course instead. Ideally, you measure where in the course the learners have dropped off. This data can help you see if there are any possible problems with a particular lesson or piece of training. It also helps measure the quality of your training content, and it may even identify device compatibility issues if you’re conducting online training.

7. Training Experience Satisfaction

Training experience satisfaction is a popular training metric and can be typically found in a post-training survey. It is used to gauge how satisfied learners are with the training they received. You can have learners rate the training on a scale, gather feedback through questions, or allow them space to write comments about their training experience. This helps you assess whether or not the training was successful in the eyes of the learners or not. 

With their SCORM authoring tool and template library, you can create four different types of surveys with SC Training (formerly EdApp). You can have learners fill out a free text box, answer a multiple-choice question, plot their feedback on a quadrant, or rate the training on a sliding scale. You can add these surveys at the end of your lessons so that learners can give feedback every step of the way of their training.

8. Training Cost per Employee

Training cost per employee is a straightforward metric that divides the total cost of training by the number of employees. This formula can be applied to a specific training program or to the sum of all the training done during a period of time. You can measure whether or not you are overspending on your training or if the expenses being made are justified. Additionally, you can also use this metric to plan your following training budgets, using resources effectively and efficiently.

9. Training Return on Investment

Return on investment (ROI) of training measures the efficiency or profitability of your training. This metric is usually linked to greater revenue and business impact. While you don’t have to use this metric for all of your training initiatives, it can help identify your most impactful training programs.

Let’s say you wanted to increase your sales made through calls, and you send your employees to take a particular training program, like telephone skills training. After completion, you should track customer satisfaction, sales performance, and net profits to gauge whether or not the training was worth the investment. 

10. Employee Performance Post-Training

Our last training metric on this list is employee performance post-training. This metric looks at the improvement of employee performance related to the training over time. Just like the training ROI, you can only measure it with your more impactful training programs. The impact of the training may be noticeable right away or after an extended period of time, depending on the technicality of the skill being trained. 

You can track this with other employee performance metrics like the number of sales, active leads, and errors. The data can assist you in seeing which training programs are more effective in teaching a new skill in a certain amount of time.

11. Operational efficiency

If done correctly, training should boost operational efficiency by addressing particular skill gaps required to optimize workplace procedures.

For example, you may miss 40% of your deadlines right now. If an employee training program is implemented to address this particular problem, there should be an obvious improvement (e.g., a 20% or 5% drop over time). Operational metrics like ‘time to repair,’ ‘time to recover,’ ‘time to failure,’ and ‘cost-per-click’ can be monitored before and after training to see whether there’s a gain in efficiency.

12. Changed employee behavior

Another employee training metric you can use is examining their behavior post-training. You can check to see if they’re applying what they’ve learned from the training sessions or not. You can also observe whether their performance is better and whether they appear more confident when doing their tasks. When you witness someone applying new knowledge to their work, it’s another sign that your training was effective.