When you plan a training and development program for your organization, you expect it to improve your employees’ skills, productivity, and retention. As a learning and development professional, you will want to consider the effectiveness of training to determine if it was worth the time and money. To determine whether training was a success you need to gather feedback from your employees.

HOW TO COLLECT USEFUL FEEDBACK FROM TRAINEES

It’s standard practice to hand out survey forms when a day of training is done, or to email feedback forms to trainees the next day. Getting the right feedback in the right ways can lead to continuous improvement in training efforts.

Collect Operational Feedback as Soon as Sessions End

It is too early to collect data on the long-term effects that training produce. But it is the time to ask trainees to comment on the quality of the program, by asking questions like these:

• Did you learn what you expected to in the training sessions?
• Was the trainer knowledgeable, prepared, and able to answer questions and resolve any problems?
• Did the training keep you interested and engaged?
• Which concepts do you think will be the most helpful and productive?
• How soon will you start to apply the ideas that you took away?
• Was there a good mixture of presentations, breakout sessions and other forms of learning?
• Did any problems occur during the session? If so, how were they resolved?
• What was the best part of the program?
• What part of the program needed the most improvement?
• What suggestions would you like to make about future training?

TAKEAWAY

Training is all about improving individual learning and in turn, improving overall business. It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the training you’re conducting. That can be hard to do; but with an intentional approach, you can build data that proves the true value of your program.