Quick Tips to Measure Training ROI

The end goal of every enterprise is to earn profits. Revenue is what drives a business. With this vision in mind, business leaders make decisions about investments and expenses. All investments are carefully planned in a way that it will generate ROI in the future. So, when an organization sets aside a certain budget to invest in employee training, they expect a return on training investment too. Employers expect their employees to be well trained so that they can effectively contribute to the growth of the organization.

As most of the training programs these days are being delivered on mobile devices, enterprises have a better chance of getting accurate information about the actual returns on training investment.

This has been made possible with the help of back-end tools which collect employee engagement data, analyze it and displays it in a comprehensive format. Apart from numerical data, there are certain other factors which help in determining the training ROI. All this data combined, helps the employer plan their budget and make informed business decisions.

Businesses work on numbers and statistics. There has to be a visible record of all the transactions and activities undertaken in the organization. So, for employee training, merely creating and delivering courses isn’t enough. There has to be a report to validate the effectiveness of the training program, where analytics can help. A lot of training delivery platforms have an analytics feature which lets you view the performance of the employees.

With a clear visual representation of the engagement levels, assessment scores, and overall performance, enterprises can make informed decisions about the further course of action. Based on the findings of the report, one can redesign or modify certain elements of the training module. So, a detailed analytics report can help you measure the ROI in terms of training effectiveness.

Related: Employee Training Metrics: 7 Ways HR Experts Use Them

A happy client is always good for your business. But, apart from increasing revenues, this criterion can also be leveraged to measure the training ROI as well. When employees are well trained in providing good quality service or developing a robust product or application, it shows the effectiveness of the training program.

What they learn is what they implement. So, if the employee is doing everything right, eventually addressing all the client needs and delivering a quality product/service, it can be considered as a validation of a training program done well. So, client satisfaction can also be considered as a factor for measuring the return on training investment.

Related: How to Empower Frontline Employees with Mobile Training

Assessments are used to evaluate the employee’s knowledge of the course module. How does this help in assessing the return on training investment?

When employees score well in their tests, it reflects that they have understood the concepts and are ready for the job. The sooner the employees pass the assessments or the higher the scores they get, the better the training program is considered to be.

After investing in a mobile training program, employers wish to see its effectiveness and engagement value. And hence, assessment scores are considered quite useful in measuring training ROI.

Related: [Infographic] Accelerate Employee Engagement With Mobile-Based Corporate Training Program

This one’s linked to the earlier point. Knowledge retention determines the effectiveness of the training program and can be ascertained through assessments. All your efforts are futile if the employee is unable to remember the information learned. So, to ensure that employees retain as much information as possible, you must create an engaging training module, which includes interactivities and other features.

This will help employees in retaining and recalling the information when required. From an ROI perspective, the sooner and longer the employee is able to remember the training information, the sooner they are able to deliver results and ensure higher productivity.

Related: 7 Most Effective Ways to Make Corporate Training Engaging

High turnover is an indication of dissatisfied employees. Either they are not receiving suitable training and development opportunities, or they are unhappy with the work environment. Employees mostly leave an organization due to a lack of growth opportunities.

An added advantage of creating mobile training programs is that you can create multiple courses in different domains and make it available to your employees. It could be related to the work at hand, or skill development courses. Once the employees are done with their recommended course modules, they can browse for additional courses and enhance their skills or learn new skills.

This provides them with an opportunity to enhance their knowledge and capabilities, which will lead to growth opportunities in the organization, and thus reducing the number of employee turnovers and increasing return on training investments.

Related: 8 Best Employee Engagement Strategies

No more training booklets and manuals, or training room resources. People carry mobile phones and tablets in person every moment. So, delivering training on these devices removes the need for you to provide physical training resources, maintaining a training room and all the associated costs. All those resources that were earlier used to print manuals, recruit trainers, etc., can now be redirected for other uses.

Now all you need is an employee training platform or software to create and deliver training modules. This practice has given rise to the BYOD trend. As the company is not required to pay for the mobile devices used for accessing training, it results in cost savings, thus increasing your ROI.

Related: How to Choose the Right Employee Training Software

Today, although companies are willing to spend on training and development programs, the calculations have to be supported with estimates of the potential benefits of investing in learning programs and technologies. In order to justify one’s investment, there has to be positive results as an evidence. Delivering mobile-first training content helps in analyzing the effectiveness of the training program with the help of measurable data.

All the strategies mentioned above can be utilized to calculate the ROI of the training. To increase the training ROI, enterprises must first invest in a well-designed training plan, which will help them achieve improved productivity, cost reductions and increase in customer satisfaction.