Grace Hill Training Tip of the Week
Measuring Training Effectiveness:
How to Tell If Your Program Works
The holy grail of compliance training questions: Is the training working?
This is the first post in a series about how to measure the effectiveness of your compliance training program. Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.
Being able to answer the question, “Is my compliance training program working?” requires thoughtful planning, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Breaking it down can help, so over the next few weeks we’ll provide a series of tips for structuring a good compliance training evaluation plan.
It may help to think about your plan in the five components below. Each one represents an important program evaluation pillar. Collectively, the information will help you understand what’s working and what isn’t so you can target improvements to your compliance training over time. Even if an evaluation doesn’t show positive results, it is a success if it provides the information you need to make things better.
Implementation
Did employees complete the training? Collecting this data guards against drawing wrong conclusions about effectiveness. You don’t want to say training didn’t work when, in fact, the issue was that employees didn’t complete the training, or didn’t complete it with fidelity.
Learning
Did employees learn the content taught in the training? This provides information on effectiveness of the instruction itself. If employees can’t demonstrate they grasp what’s been taught, it is very unlikely they will be able to apply the training content on the job.
Reaction
Did employees like the training and feel they benefitted from it? Buy-in will increase likelihood that training will continue to be implemented with fidelity. This is particularly important in compliance training.
Transfer
Do employees use the strategies on which they were trained on the job? Even if employees demonstrate learning mastery (above), key metrics will not be affected if behaviors aren’t changed.
Performance Results
Does using the strategies result in improved on-the-job performance? The primary goal of training is to improve job performance. This is typically one of the more difficult things to measure, but also arguably the most important.
Before you start planning against these components, it is important to answer this question regarding each of your compliance training programs: What does success look like? Is it that all employees take training on time? Is it also that instances of non-compliant behavior (e.g., harassment) are reduced, or that accident rates or claims rates are at or below a benchmark? Taking the time to articulate your success metrics up front will pay off greatly as you create and implement your evaluation plan.
Sneak preview… Next week, we’ll look more closely at how to measure training implementation!
