How to get good feedback on training from employees

Why we need employee training feedback

By asking for feedback directly from your employees, you can better understand which areas of your training programme actually need work. Obtaining feedback for trainers who run your employee development initiatives will also help them to know if they’re doing enough for your employees. They’ll be able to:

Identify areas of improvement

No one wants to waste their time on fruitless tasks. If any areas of your training schemes are lacking, you’ll find out through feedback within an employee evaluation form for training.

Keeping your employee development programmes up to scratch is essential for reaping their benefits for your company. For instance, did you know that these programmes are a primary deciding factor for skilled talent when choosing employers? According to a Gallup study, 65% of workers believe that ‘employer-provided upskilling’ is very important in choosing their new role.

Retain employees

Training is equally crucial for employee retention, with ‘opportunities to learn and grow’ being one of the top three factors for retaining millennial workers.

In a LinkedIn workplace learning report, a huge 93% of employees said that they would remain with a company for longer if the employer was investing in their careers. By collecting and acting on your employees’ feedback on training, they’ll believe that you’re truly invested in their careers.

Retaining employees is better for a company’s finances too, as it can be costly to search for, recruit and onboard new employees. Employee turnover costs an average of £11,000 per person – money which could be better invested in improving your employee training programme.

Increase training ROI

Your training evaluation forms may indicate the best way to invest your employee training budget. By investing into the right courses to build the relevant skills, your employees will be more productive.

Motorola found that for every dollar spent on employee development, they saw a 30% increase in productivity.

How to get the most out of employee training feedback

Don’t put your employee training feedback forms in a drawer and forget about them. They’re valuable instruction manuals that will help you to get your training right, but only if you’ve created them in an intentional and thoughtful way. Before gathering feedback, ensure you’ve considered the following:

Identify specific KPIs for your training

What are the objectives for your employee development programmes? Is it to improve customer service? Adopt new technologies? Improve teamwork?

Cater your feedback forms to understand whether or not your training is effective in reaching those goals.

Keep feedback anonymous

Some of your employees may hold back on giving feedback if their names are on the form.

While you should urge that feedback should be appropriate and fair, it should also be honest. Allowing them to leave their names off of certain general feedback forms will help to promote the quantity and quality of feedback for trainers.

Gather continuous feedback

Make getting feedback on your trainers and programme a priority. Gather feedback early into the programme, during, as well as after courses have been completed. This way, you’ll ensure that you’re always improving your company’s learning opportunities and never missing a trick.

How to collect employee feedback

There are various ways to collect feedback from training. You could use several of the examples below to get a more complete idea of how your development programmes are going.

Onboarding surveys

First impressions are everything. Send survey questions about training to new employees within their first 90 days of employment to see how they’re finding the learning process.

Engagement surveys

These types of surveys can be taken on a larger scale, to gather information on anything from employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

Pulse surveys

Shorter versions of engagement surveys – typically one to five questions – to help keep your finger on the pulse of employee training satisfaction. These are particularly useful to gather feedback for trainers about their teaching style.

One-to-one meetings

Weekly or monthly meetings with the trainer or their manager will help to get a feeling of how employees are finding their training. This is a great way to get feedback on communication within training and take any suggestions for improvement.

Training feedback form sample

To get an idea of how to structure your surveys, take a look at this feedback form template.

You can alter it to suit your own company using some of the example questions below:

Questions for training feedback

Did you learn something new in this course? Please explain below.
Did you feel that the training suited your style of learning? (auditory/kinesthetic/visual)
Did you enjoy the mode of teaching? (i.e. one-on-one, webinar etc.)
Did you feel that there was anything missing from the training?
Will you participate in future training?
How would you improve this course for future learners?

Automatic feedback solution

At the end of every course with My Learning Hub, users can rate the quality of the course based on their personal experience.

Giving your employees the opportunity to provide feedback will help your employees to feel heard. You can take this feedback to improve the quality, relevance and interactivity of your courses to accelerate your development programmes and get the most out of them.

My Learning Hub is working on a recommendation algorithm for Mylo Bot, which allows employees to shape course recommendations according to their needs or personal preferences. They can rate completed courses and mark them as relevant or irrelevant depending on the search results and provide feedback on suggested learning content.

Book a free demo to see how My Learning Hub can help to build a valuable, tailored training programme for your business today.