How to track your employee training progress?

Employee training is a basic necessity for increasing productivity and ensuring a better customer experience. And while most companies are doing their part in terms of following systems to train their employees, most of them are overlooking how technology can make it better. When we talk about employee training, the first things that come to mind are big books and test assignments, followed by a few classes and, of course, topped with soft skills training.  

With so much going on, a simple test cannot determine the employee training progress or where they fit in the company. Companies have to resort to other ways to actually know how much their employees have learned from the training program. While spending hours to analyze and report things manually might seem like the right choice for something so important, technology can aid it to a certain level in most cases.  

Before we move forward, let’s talk about why employee training is important. 

Improves knowledge and skills 

Employee training has the basic goal of improving an employee’s skills and knowledge. Here we are talking about an overall improvement in all regards, not just project-related matters. Training helps employees achieve more than they are capable of and helps align their learning goals with the organization’s offerings.  

Reduce Employee Attrition  

Without proper training, the employees would be bound to leave the company after a certain duration. The basic reasons for this could be the employee not understanding the process the organization follows before beginning to work or the employee realizing the company is neglecting their needs by cost-cutting on training.  

Prepares employees for higher roles 

Most employees enter the organization looking forward to working on their tasks and responsibilities. Training can help change that mindset; with the right material and delivery, you can prepare your employees to progress further in the company. Many even consider the training of employees as the foundation of the company.  

Help improve customer interactions 

Preparing employees for what’s coming next is one major part of the training. Your employees could easily learn what situations they would face, when to handle things, and when to escalate them, keeping overall customer satisfaction high as ever. The only way to grow in today’s competitive world is to keep the customers satisfied, and helping your employees learn that from the start makes it much easier.  

Improves the workplace environment 

Imagine everyone being at the same pace and skill level, and employee training helps them be. While people won’t forget the skills they have, you can ensure each of them has at least the skills you require of them. Setting your training modules in a way that each employee matches the skills required to do the job can greatly improve the workplace environment.  

Let’s move on to how to track employee training progress?  

There are both automated and manual ways to do so; which one you choose completely depends on your goals and the resources you plan to allocate to the task. The type of training you are providing also helps determine the best training tracking methodology, even though we believe the best always lies with automation technology. Now, let’s begin with the options you have when it comes to tracking the employee training progress.  

The two ways of tracking employee training progress: 

Excel or Google Sheets 

You can always choose to do it as it was in the old times. You can collect data from various sources and have someone put it down in Excel or Google Sheets. Further, you can determine the score and overall performance through Pivot tables, and anyone skilled in using sheets could help you with it.  

While this method might seem cost-effective, it skips on vital information that cannot be defined with mere numbers. When you plan to effectively track individual employees’ progress, the only option you have with this one is to compare the mean and median and call it a day.  

Pros of using sheets:  

1. The investment is very low compared to the money you would be spending on a complete system for tracking.  

1. Fairly easy to use and implement by anyone skilled with sheets. 

1. No need for additional systems, databases, software integrations, etc.  

Cons of using sheets: 

1. It would simply be impossible to do if you had thousands of employees. 

1. The data generated would have no practical use except for you knowing how which employee performed.  

LMS or Learning Management System 

Learning management systems are built to aid learning and, in our case, training. Custom LMS can help you with various insights of your choice and would be fed the data automatically when the employees use it for training. The software is usually used for e-learning but can be customized to work as training management software or TMS.  

This is the way to go if you are planning to invest in employee training tracking. The system would be scalable for as many categories and the number of employees you like. Considering it as a one-time investment, custom lms development can be worth your while depending on the size of your organization and your requirement to track and improve employee training.  

Pros of using an LMS 

1. It is the best way to learn online, with everything being accessible in one place. 

1. The employees would be able to track their own progress and improve upon it eventually.  

1. Using advanced AI, you will be able to use the metrics and data generated for various purposes and employee allocation.  

Cons of LMS 

1. It can be somewhat expensive to develop if you want a completely custom system.  

1. For organizations having less than a hundred employees, the cost to benefit ratio would be too weak. 

1. You would require additional systems, databases, and trained employees to operate and make full use of the software.  

Ready to track the progress your employees have made? 

When we talk about tracking employee training progress, people usually think about numbers. But with improving technology, you can track everything from top to bottom, and using advanced AI, make sense of it all to benefit your organization. If you plan to invest in employee training, an eLearning software development company is your best bet to get your own software solution built. The RoI and extended benefits both dwarf the overall cost of the software, and you would be able to utilize your employees much more when you know what they are actually capable of.