Many organizations conduct financial audits, compliance audits, environmental audits, and other internal audits on a regular basis, but they don’t always conduct audits for their L&D and training programs, which is mind-boggling, seeing as how effective L&D and training programs have been proven to increase an organization’s bottom line and retain more engaged employees longer.
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Yesterday’s post covered why you need to conduct an audit for your training programs, and today’s post will cover how you can conduct an audit for your training programs step by step.
Catalog Your Training Programs
First, you’ll need to compile a list, or comprehensive catalog, of all the training programs you have developed to conduct a thorough audit, as well as all the training programs your learners can access via your learning systems and platforms. Having this master list or catalog will help as you audit each individual training program to ensure that it’s effective and up to date.
Analyze Learner Data and Feedback
When conducting your audit, look at your learners’ data to see which programs they take the most and how well they do in each of those training programs. If most of your learners don’t do well in a certain training program, that program may need to be revamped to suit their learning needs or preferences, for example.
If learners seem to flock to a certain training program more so than others, learn more about why. Is the program accessed via mobile apps when your other programs aren’t? Is it more interactive?
Such learner data will provide you with insight into which training programs are more effective with your learners. You can also conduct polls and solicit learners’ feedback directly to see which training programs they prefer and why.
Evaluate Employee Performance
As you analyze learner data when conducting your audit, you should also evaluate the employee performance data collected before learners engage in training programs so that you can compare those data with the data collected after they engage in training programs.
If a group of sales associates take a sales training course, for example, you want to make sure they became more effective salespeople after taking it. In other words, their sales performance should be better after they take the training course than it was before they took the course. Otherwise, the training course was not effective.
Assess Opportunities for Improvement
As you audit your training programs, look for areas where you can implement new technologies or strategies to make those programs better. Usually, you can use learner data and feedback and employee performance data to discover new opportunities, as well as industry trends and research.
For instance, you might discover that your compliance training program can and should be conducted with virtual reality technology or that you need mobile apps for your onboarding training programs.
Above all else, don’t be afraid to scrap programs that don’t work or incorporate newer technology into your training programs so that they can work better.
Always Tie Training Programs to Organizational Goals
As you comb through each training program individually, make sure you tie each to an organizational goal. If your programs aren’t tied to an organizational goal, they will not be effective or yield a high return on investment.
If you want your training programs to be effective and yield positive returns, conduct an audit today by using the steps outlined above.