How do you measure the impact of frontline training?

Measuring the impact of frontline training is hard. Why? Because learning measurement is a lot more complicated than comparing befores and afters. Increasing sales don’t necessarily mean your sales training is working. Many factors that affect your frontline—like marketing, seasonality and staffing—can cloud your perception of success. Collecting the right data clears things up so you can focus on what really matters: business results.

As our own JD Dillon explains on The 80 Percent podcast, knowing exactly which programs are influencing the metrics you care about, and which ones are missing the mark, means you can easily adjust them on the fly to drive measurable change. 

It’s time to move past outdated measurement methods. Now, L&D professionals can elevate their learning programs into continuous cycles of optimization that measure success—both at the individual and team levels.

4 key learning metrics to help you measure impact

If you want to truly measure the results of your frontline training programs, you can use data to connect people’s behavior directly to digital solutions. To do so, there are four critical metrics to watch:

1. Engagement

Which activities are your frontline employees completing and how often are they participating? Tracking individual learning habits and engagement patterns gives you insight into what’s resonating with your frontline and what isn’t, so you can create a culture of continuing development. 

2. Knowledge

Organizations can collect hard data on the knowledge levels of every single employee to identify gaps and personalize their training to the areas where they need to improve. 

3. Behavior 

How has job performance changed over time? Chances are you’re already taking a look at workplace improvements or challenges for performance reviews. This data is valuable for your training team to get their hands on, too.

4. Results

Awards. Positive reviews. Special accomplishments. Creating a clear value chain connecting training and results will show you how well your efforts are paying off.

Traditionally, it’s been virtually impossible to tie a one-and-done learning metric (like test scores) to a business result (like an increase in sales) in a meaningful way at scale. And yet, organizations continue to spend big bucks on training without being able to prove that it drives bottom-line results. Until now. 

Axonify collects learning data on each employee as they engage in daily training, then uses machine learning and predictive analytics to uncover the true link between training and business results. With a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t, you can be proactive in how you manage your training strategy to make sure you maximize the return on everyone’s investment in time, energy and resources.

To hear more insights from JD Dillon on all things measurement, listen to the full episode of The 80 Percent podcast.

Maliyah Bernard

Maliyah Bernard is an academic writer turned copywriter. As a former frontline worker, she loves writing about all the ways organizations can support these essential workers smarter.

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