Training is an extremely important tool, because if you want your employees to perform their activities well, you have to train them. It is essential for both new employees and for those who have been working for the company for a long time, as training provides an opportunity to improve skills.
With the speed of change and the continuous transformation of the market, organizations need to adapt quickly. In this competitive and constantly changing market, companies need increasingly qualified and competent professionals who can help organizations in the continuous effort to improve processes to progress and achieve success and growth.
Given this scenario, it is understood that training is an essential strategic tool for organizations, contributing to building knowledge and skills among employees and developing new skills that enable employees to improve and perform their activities effectively, promoting results that are aligned with organizational objectives.
Why is training important for a Quality Management System?
First, have you ever stopped to think about how many of your quality deviations or non-conformities are caused by human error? And were these errors isolated or recurrent events?
If you answered that they are recurrent, the employee training in your organization, unfortunately, is not effective.
We know that quality and certification standards require trained employees to carry out their activities, as well as proof of recording and evaluating the effectiveness of training. However, training an employee through an individual reading of a procedure, without detailing it, and making him or her sign attendance, is definitely not considered effective, unless the procedure is very orienting and self-taught.
Unfortunately, this kind of training is still practiced in many companies, where training is carried out only to keep records and provide proof of compliance with the standard.
If training in your company is conducted this way- just to keep records- this is probably the root cause of the numerous quality deviations and non-conformities due to operational error.
Training carried out without management and subsequent evaluation of the results is useless and does little to contribute to quality, process improvement or company growth. To ensure quality in processes, you have to invest in robust training programs- training that actually results in learning.
A trained and qualified employee is an indication of quality in all processes. Thus, the concern with training employees to perform their activities efficiently and effectively improves results and customer satisfaction. It is extremely important for the Quality Management System to measure the results and subsequent performance of employees with an assessment of their training.
How can we evaluate the effectiveness of training?
First of all, you need to understand that an assessment of training effectiveness begins long before it is applied. It starts with planning and defining goals; that is, you need to know where you want to go with the training and clearly establish the purpose of the training.
What is a good training plan?
You elaborate a good training plan to guide the best way to carry out the training of your target group. To achieve this, you need to really understand what the team needs and define the skills to develop in the training.
When planning, it is essential to consider the following:
- Training topics and content;
- Appropriate language and methodology to convey the content to the target group;
- Time and duration of training;
- In-person or virtual training;
- Advantages and benefits.
It is essential that employees understand the purpose of the training so that they can focus on the knowledge and skills they need to develop.
After planning, the next step is to define how the effectiveness assessment will be carried out.
The goal of the effectiveness assessment is to analyze whether the skills and knowledge were effectively acquired. Above all, it is to ensure that training is satisfying the organization’s needs, whether it is training employees for new activities, projects or functions, developing skills to improve processes, changes to improve the performance of employees in their activities, guidance for avoiding problems and mitigating risks or a skills recycling after a quality deviation or non-compliance, among others.
There are many methods for evaluating the effectiveness of training. However, it is important to note that each organization works differently, and the method chosen should take into account what will work best for the company considering its organizational culture.
The most common methods used to evaluate training effectiveness are:
1. Testing
Tests can be given to the trainees to determine if the skills and/or knowledge were assimilated with the content. These can be written tests with questions on the subject, or practical tests that involve the execution of a process or task that was taught during training.
A very important consideration in this method is apply the test twice, if possible, to ensure a more accurate evaluation. Apply a test before and after the training so you can compare results and evaluate the real development of the employee.
2. Interviews
This form of assessment consists of getting feedback from the trainee with questions on the content covered in the training.
3. Evaluation of process metrics
Develop indicators that can measure the achievement of training goals, For example, if you provided training on a production process, and the rework ratio for this line only increases, you can conclude that it was not effective. Or to use the earlier example of quality deviations and non-conformities, conducting a skills refresher and subsequent evaluation of recurrence can be a way to measure effectiveness. Thus, evaluating process metrics is a way to determine whether the training was effective or not and, whenever possible, present them to upper management so they can see the gains in employee training.
In addition, you can also carry out a two-step effectiveness assessment: right after training and after carrying out planned monitoring. Carrying out the assessment right after training will help you to understand whether the employee has assimilated the new knowledge. The assessment after monitoring will help you to verify if the employee learned the skills, as you are providing the employee with a period to put the acquired knowledge into practice.
If necessary, repeat the assessment at a later date, considering that each person takes their own time to absorb and put into practice new knowledge.
Now, in view of the topics discussed in this article, you may be asking yourself: “Do I really need to do all this to comply with the standard?” The answer is, yes!
Does keeping training records alone mean you are complying with the norm? The answer is, no! You will only be fooled by evidence of ineffective training.
As we have explained in this article, to ensure the quality of your processes and to achieve your organization’s goals, you need effective training management!
Now that you know the importance of effective training management, learn more about SoftExpert HDM, the most comprehensive solution for human development management that allows you to map competencies, plan and execute training and assess training performance, satisfying all your training management needs.
