Do You Really Know How Effective Your Live Training Is

February 15, 2022

What’s the return your company gets on all the live training you do with your workforce? 10%? 15%? Unsure? If your answer is the latter, you’re not alone.

Measuring the effectiveness of live training has been an ongoing challenge for L&D Departments for years. As companies have shifted to live virtual training, it’s become even more difficult.

Despite this, companies still pour billions of dollars in training. Training expenditure in the US rose 12% from 2020-2021. That’s nearly $92.3 billion*!

“We don’t have a standardized process to follow for measuring live training effectiveness”. “I don’t have the right tools nor tactics to collect live learning data”.

Those are the two challenges we hear the most.

Unaddressed, these challenges cost companies millions in wasted dollars per year. In fact, companies create $13,000 in corporate training waste per employee every year.

Read on to learn how to tackle these training measurement challenges.

Measuring Training Effectiveness Successfully Comes Down To These Three Things.

Think of training effectiveness measurement like an assembly line. In order to deliver a good product, you need good, quality raw materials. Next, you need a well thought out production process that will transform your raw materials into a usable product. Underpinning it all is a core piece of machinery that takes the raw materials and follows all the steps in the production process to build the final product.

Let’s take a look at the assembly line to produce effective training metrics.

The Raw Materials - Live Learning Data

We’re all capturing data in some way, either formally or informally. But are you collecting good, quality data that will yield meaningful insights to improve training effectiveness?

For most companies, data collection takes place quarterly. Ask most HR folks and they’ll argue that they don’t have the data needed to actually make training more effective. Why?

In our recent webinar, Winning Strategies for Measuring Live Training Effectiveness, Enable Education Senior Learning Experience Designer Micky Bahadur argued that collecting live learning data alone isn’t enough. The live learning data also needs to be collected in real-time.

The value of live training data erodes over time, and in many cases, it’s difficult to draw any useful conclusions from three-month old data.

Capturing live learning data in real-time is essential.

Unfortunately most L&D departments can’t capture live learning data in real-time because they simply don’t have the resources and tools to do so. But with powerful new emerging tech, L&D Departments can collect this data quite easily.

The Production Process - Training Effectiveness Models

Any efficient assembly line is designed with a well thought-out process mapped out .

In the case of measuring training effectiveness, implementing a proven training evaluation model can help you not only improve training, but maximize the transfer of learning to behaviour and subsequent organizational results.

More importantly, using a model will help you demonstrate the value of training to your leadership and stakeholders.

To do this, you need good, quality data (this is not a recording! See above). Training evaluation models like the Kirkpatrick Model provide a data collection framework to determine what’s working and what isn’t, and to make strategic improvements

The Machinery - Learning Engagement Platforms

Capturing live training data in real-time without the right tools is like trying to catch a fish without a net. Unfortunately, most don’t have a net. It’s why more than 90% of companies aren’t currently capturing live training data in real-time.

The reality is, there just aren’t many technologies that exist that are designed to capture this type of data. But with live virtual training squarely placed in the spotlight due to the pandemic, the value of live learning data has increased exponentially.

Online learners are growing more and more disengaged with the live virtual training experience. The ability to capture live learning data in real-time enables trainers to assess virtual learner engagement on the fly and make adjustments to their teaching approach accordingly.

Learning Engagement Platforms like Sidekick are technologies born from the pandemic to address the virtual live learning challenge specifically. It’s not only designed to capture live-learning data in real-time, but it’s also equipped with an entire feature suite to help trainers engage virtual learners more effectively.

Get Started With Measuring Training Effectiveness

In Winning Strategies for Measuring Live Training Effectiveness, we cover how to implement an evidence-based model to measure training effectiveness. We also discuss actionable tips on how to utilize insights uncovered from live-learning data.

Click here to access the webinar recording.

Got questions? Contact us at info@sidekick.training

*2021 Training Industry Report