Use Training Survey Questions to Measure Training Effectiveness
Are you serious about your company’s training program? Are you confident in your ability to effectively train both new hires and current employees? Do you have a system in place for measuring effectiveness?
Here’s one of my favorite quotes on training (courtesy of Benjamin Franklin):
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
Don’t tell your employees what to do. Don’t simply teach your employees what to do. Instead, involve them in every step of the process.
Not only does effective training ensure that your employees are in a position to succeed, but it also saves your company time and money.
According to ADP, U.S. small businesses spend an average of $1,886 on training a new employee.
This is a lot of money, so it’s critical that you spend it wisely. And that leads to an important question: what’s the best way to measure training effectiveness?
While there are many ways to measure training performance, none are better than direct feedback from employees.
To obtain feedback, ask your employees to complete a training survey. It’ll only take a few minutes, but the answers will go a long way in helping you adjust your approach to training in the future.
Benefits of Conducting a Training Survey
No two companies are identical, but most understand the importance of effective training. Without this, you’re throwing your employees into the fire and asking them to perform. As you know, that doesn’t typically work.
There are many benefits to conducting a training survey, including the following:
- Clearly define what is and isn’t working: The answers to your questions will help you better understand what’s effective, what’s ineffective, and what your employees want to see more of in the future. Once you know what’s not working, you can focus more energy on what is.
- It shows your employees you care: If it’s “ your way or the highway,” your employees will eventually tune you out. But when you show you care, such as by asking for feedback, your employees are more likely to develop into top-notch team players.
- Help keep talent at home: A high turnover rate can kill your business. There are many ways to prevent this, including giving employees all the resources they need to succeed. If you don’t provide proper training, your employees are more likely to leave your company. And the only way to provide proper training is to know what is and isn’t working.
Use a Training Survey Form to Get Started
There is more than one way to ask training survey questions, but an online survey form is the most efficient. Not only is this easy to distribute to trainees, but it’s just as simple for them to complete and submit.
With the Opinion Stage survey creator, you can make a training survey form within a matter of minutes. Depending on your preference, you can build it from scratch or use one of our many survey templates.
There’s nothing difficult about asking training survey questions. It all comes down to your ability to choose the right questions (more on this below), share them with your employees in the proper format, and collect data that will help you tweak your training program in the future.
Best Training Survey Questions
There are no right or wrong questions to include in a training survey form. The approach you take depends largely on your answers to these questions:
- What are your survey objectives?
- Who are the people answering the questions? Will they be truthful?
- Is there a particular aspect of the training you want to learn more about?
While some survey questions make more sense than others, here are 15 for you to consider:
1. What was your overall impression of the training you received?
2. Did you receive feedback throughout the process?
3. What part of the training was most helpful?
4. What part of the training left you wanting more?
5. Would you structure the course in a different manner?
6. On a scale of 1 to 10 – with 10 being the most likely – how likely would you be to recommend this form of training to another company?
7. Were you given enough time to complete the training?
8. What steps did you take when you ran into challenges?
9. How do you feel about the way information was administered to you?
10. Did you find it easy to progress through the training one step at a time?
11. Were you impressed by the technology used during training?
12. Was the training what you expected?
13. What can we do to improve our training process in the future?
14. Did the training relate to your job responsibilities in the way you expected?
15. On a scale of 1 to 10 – with 10 being the most confident – how confident are you in your ability to put your training into action?
Some of these questions you can ask as-is. Others may require some tweaking to better match your specific type of training and objectives.
Avoid Low Response Rates
A low response rate to your survey is a common concern, but don’t let it stop you from taking action. There are steps you can take to combat this concern, including the following:
- Be concise: If your survey is long-winded and difficult to understand, there’s a greater chance of your employees ignoring it. Be concise, get to the point, and only ask the most important questions (aim for no more than five to 10).
- Offer an incentive for participating: It only takes a small incentive to attract respondents. For example, you could offer a gift card or entry into a company drawing for a valuable prize. Sometimes this is the nudge people need to take action.
- Keep it anonymous: It’s safe to say some employees won’t share their opinion over fear of angering someone. By promising to keep the survey results anonymous, you can remove this fear from the process.
Tip: boost your response rate by sharing your survey form online or via email. This is much easier to distribute and collect than a paper survey. Furthermore, it’s more time-efficient for your employees, thus improving the likelihood of them completing it.
Final Thoughts
Your company is only as good as the training you provide. If you want to make the most of your training program, use a survey form to measure performance. With each bit of feedback you receive, you’ll inch closer to implementing a training program that yields positive results.
You can easily do it yourself, no need for a developer
Make a Survey