Introduction to training surveys

In an increasingly competitive world investing in training for your employees has never been more important. Not only does developing your employees help boost their motivation and self-belief, the resulting benefits of increased staff performance and productivity helps keep your organisation competitive and moving forward.

However, ongoing training can be a significant investment, so you’ll want to make sure you’re getting the maximum return on it if you’re to realise all the benefits. Fortunately, thanks to the feedback and evaluation facilitated by the training survey, you’ll have the ideal opportunity to better understand employees’ learning experiences, good or bad, so you can make the necessary improvements to maintain the quality of your training.

From the delivery and skills of the tutors, to the value of the content and quality of your course materials, through the questions you ask in your training survey you’ll gain a better insight into what staff really think about your training. You’ll be better placed to evaluate what’s working well and what you need to improve, so you can further adapt and shape training to best meet both business and your employees’ needs.

How training surveys support the employee lifecycle

Companies that invest in employee training enjoy 24% higher profit margin, compared to companies who don’t. - GO-Gulf

From induction and onboarding, to new job skills, promotion and refresher training, after their initial training to get them up to speed with the job, there will be numerous stages during a staff member’s employment where they will require fresh training to enhance their knowledge and skillsets. Armed with your training survey, you’ll be able to ask the questions you need to ensure your training is delivering the required standards and appropriate to the audience.

Depending on the situation there may also be occasions when you want to gain an even deeper understanding of your employees’ experience at crucial stages of the employee lifecycle. In such circumstances there are a number of more niche surveys you might want to consider.

These could include new employee onboarding surveys, where you delve into more of the detail of what employees thought of your training during this crucial period, to recruitment surveys that check whether they actually received the training they were promised on joining and it met with their expectations.

In the same way that lifelong learning and regular staff training help individuals to thrive, surveys play an important role in any employee engagement program, offering opportunities to get actionable feedback from the first few months of employment through to exit.

Training survey best practices

From the format of your questions and your survey’s length, to the question of how and when you should send it and follow it up. If you’re going to the get the maximum value from any employee survey there are a number of best practice considerations you need to think about putting in place first.

To best evaluate your staff training programme here are our top four considerations:

Get the right balance with your questions

While it’s important to keep your wording simple, clear and concise, it’s also prudent to think about the format and mix of questions that you’re using to help keep your respondents engaged. From closed and open-ended questions, to multiple and Likert rating scale questions, mixing up your question structure should help with this and result in more employees completing your survey.

Keep things short and concise

Given the short amount of time available to many employees to complete your survey, they are more likely to respond to shorter, rather than lengthier surveys. So, try to trim down your questions, so you’re only including those that are most relevant and necessary. Spacing out your questions and spreading them over multiple pages, can also help you to avoid overwhelming respondents and the risk of them abandoning your survey.

Distribute your survey promptly following training

Once they get back to their workspace, the feelings and thoughts employees have about the training they’ve just received can quickly fade, so it’s best to issue your survey promptly. Aim to send it no more than 24 hours after the training session has finished so you can get your recipients feedback, while it’s still relatively fresh in their minds. It’s also worth thinking about the choice of media you distribute it on, as some employees respond better to SMS surveys, rather than the more traditional distribution method of emails.

Remember to follow up

If you’re to get the most value from your training and any improvements you make following feedback from your survey, you need to incorporate some follow up actions, so you can measure how successful you’ve been. Think about an incorporating an action plan, where you encourage trainees to write down everything, they are now able to do as a result of their training. You could also set up peer meetings with trainees to find out how they are implementing what they learnt into their everyday work and how it’s been helping their performance.

40 per cent of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year. - go2hr

Training survey questions

From feedback about the quality of your tutor and course content, to evaluation of the course materials and training venue, there can be many areas you’re looking to explore with your employees. The information gleaned from their responses will ultimately determine how well you’re able to improve future training programmes and what your employees are able to get out of them.

Subsequently, to get more insight from them about the quality of your course tutors and content, you might like to consider questions such as:

How did you rate the performance of your tutor?

(using a rating system from ‘very strong’ to ‘very poor’)

Did you find the course content engaging? And did it deliver what you were expecting?

(using a rating from ‘Yes, very much so’, to ‘No, not at all’)

How useful was the knowledge that you learnt, and do you envisage it being valuable to your job going forward?

You may then look to delve into what your respondents thought about your course materials and the venue where the training was held. Suitable questions could include:

What did you think about the quality of course materials you were provided with and value in supplementing your training?

(using a rating system from ‘excellent’ to ‘very poor’)

Was the venue where your training was held of a high standard and conducive to enabling you to learn?

(using a rating system from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’)

To get a more detailed picture of your employees training, you may then decide to finish your survey with some more open-ended questions. These could include any of the following:

List three important things you feel you have learnt as a result of your training.

I’ve been made to feel welcome here and the experience of the Is there anything you feel we could have done differently to improve your training?

Training survey software

If you’re going to make your staff training survey programme a success, you’ll need to be able to create, distribute and analyse your surveys quickly in order to make the ongoing improvements you need to help realise this.

With our HR survey software in place this is all easily achievable thanks to our:

Easy to use survey software

With our user-friendly software, ready-made and customisable templates, advanced features and extensive question library, it’s quick and simple to tailor your survey to meet the needs of staff completing a range of different training programmes.

Wide-ranging and flexible distribution options

From email and web to SMS. With our wide range of distribution options, it’s easy to give your employees greater flexibility about which media platform they choose to receive your survey from. Not only does this make it easier for them to complete at a time that is most convenient for them, it also helps to maximise your response rate.

Dynamic reporting and analysis tools

From advanced filtering and data export options, to smart dashboards featuring a wide range of charts and graphical formats. The strong reporting and analysis tools within our software, makes it simpler and quicker to identify what’s interesting in your data, share it with others and communicate the improvements you will make going forward.

87% of Millennials cite professional development as being extremely important to their decision of whether to stay in or leave a role. - Shiftlearning

Employee training survey templates

With potentially lots of training programmes and a wide range of different questions and areas you’re likely to want to cover off in them, it’s always useful to be able to view some examples first. To help you best design your employee survey you may want to look at our selection of fully customisable HR survey templates.