5 employee training metrics you’re probably not tracking (but should)

When it comes to employee training, many organizations still rely on metrics like completions and test scores to measure success. These numbers are easy to track, but they fall short of providing meaningful insight into how training impacts employee performance or drives business outcomes. Traditional metrics may tell you what happened, but they don’t tell you if it mattered—or how you can improve.

Effective training measurement is about more than reporting. It shapes strategy, boosts ROI and enables smarter decisions. Employees are overloaded with to-dos and have limited time for development. Therefore, every training moment must matter—or people won’t come back. By combining the right data and AI-enabled technology, organizations can provide personalized, continuous learning—making development part of the everyday job. But first, we need to fix L&D’s decades-old data problem. 

Yes, L&D needs more data—but more importantly, we need the right data to guide our strategies and ensure we’re making the most of our organization’s investment in time and resources. While metrics like completions and test scores still have their place, they only scratch the surface. Plenty of valuable data points are often overlooked or undervalued, leaving untapped opportunities to measure what truly matters. 

Here are five training metrics you’re probably not tracking but absolutely should:

1. Participation 

Are your employees regularly engaging with your training tools, or are they just checking boxes in the LMS when required? Participation going beyond completions (% of assigned training that’s finished) or utilization (how often your catalog is accessed). It measures whether employees are consistently interacting with training as part of their everyday work, creating habits that foster continuous learning.

At Axonify, we established this metric as part of our daily training methodology for frontline workers. By offering short, engaging microlearning sessions that fit into the workflow, we’ve consistently achieved an average participation rate of 83% among frontline staff around the world. These results demonstrate that when training is accessible, relevant and fun, employees will engage—and keep coming back. 

If your participation numbers are low, reassess how well your program fits into employees’ routines, how effectively it’s communicated and whether the training aligns with their needs. If you’re not already tracking this metric, start including participation in your reporting to identify where employees may be struggling to fit training into their busy schedules.

2. Confidence 

Are your employees truly prepared to apply what they’ve learned when it matters most? It’s not just about what they know—it’s about how confident they are in their knowledge to make the right decisions under pressure. That’s why confidence is a critical yet often overlooked training metric.

Confidence is deeply personal. You can’t gauge how confident someone is just by observing their performance. You must give employees the chance to share how prepared they feel for the job. At Axonify, we incorporate confidence-based assessments into our reinforcement strategy, asking participants to answer questions and rate how certain they are in their responses. This allows us to track shifts in both knowledge and confidence over time.

With this insight, we can identify employees who may be overconfident (potentially at risk of making mistakes due to gaps in their knowledge) or underconfident (know more than they think but may hesitate when it counts). We can even nudge managers to have targeted conversations to address these gaps.

By tracking confidence, you gain valuable insight into how effectively your training is preparing employees to act with certainty in the moment of need.

3. Achievements

How can you help employees see their progress and stay motivated to keep learning and improving? Learning isn’t a simple “pass or fail” exercise—it’s a continuous journey filled with milestones and achievements along the way. By recognizing these milestones, you can make development feel more approachable, manageable, and rewarding. Celebrating progress not only reminds employees of how far they’ve come but also clarifies the next steps needed to achieve their goals, transforming long-term growth into a series of achievable, motivating wins.

Tracking achievement provides an opportunity to recognize employees for their commitment to professional development. Badges are often synonymous with achievement, but the value isn’t the badge itself. It’s the celebration of hard work and improved capability that goes along with each credential earned. 

Achievement tracking also has practical benefits. This data point can be used to identify skill gaps, pace career development and identify team members with essential capabilities. By breaking development into meaningful milestones, you foster a culture of continuous growth and show employees that progress—not just the end result—matters. 

4. Behavior

How do you ensure employees are applying what they’ve learned on the job? Knowledge lays the foundation, but the true goal of training is behavior change. To gauge whether learning is translating into improved performance—and driving meaningful business results—you must track workplace behaviors.

Tracking behavior is often easier said than done. To do it effectively, you must find partners who are present in the workflow—managers, coaches, safety auditors and others responsible for observing performance and providing real-time feedback. Axonify enables this process with digital tools to streamline observations, capturing behavior data and turning it into actionable insights. Instead of letting this information sit unused in spreadsheets, Axonify leverages it to adapt learning on a personal level. For example, if an employee isn’t demonstrating the desired behavior, Axonify can automatically deliver targeted refresher training. If the issue isn’t knowledge-related, the platform prompts managers to step in and have a coaching conversation to uncover and address the performance gap.

By tracking behavior, you gain the insights needed to ensure training doesn’t just inform—it drives measurable performance improvements where it matters most.

5. Feedback

OK. You might already be tracking this one. But how often are you actually collecting employee feedback on training? And how much do you struggle to get people to respond to surveys after a course is complete? While automated metrics like participation, knowledge levels and achievements provide valuable insights, employee feedback is critical for understanding the full picture. What resonates with employees? What doesn’t? What do they want to see more (or less) of? Which concepts are effective, and which are confusing?

It’s easy to over-survey employees, which can lead to survey fatigue and fewer meaningful responses. Instead of pushing long-form questionnaires via email, look for ways to integrate feedback collection into the workflow. Short, simple pulse surveys and sentiment analysis can help you capture valuable insights without adding extra tasks to already busy schedules.

For example, Axonify seamlessly integrates pulse surveys into daily training sessions, taking advantage of the 3 to 5 minutes employees already spend on training each day. The platform adds just one or two quick questions to the experience while employees are already engaged. This approach achieves survey completion rates of 90% or higher, far surpassing traditional methods. By embedding feedback collection into the flow of work, you can gather meaningful insights without disrupting employees’ routines.

Measure what matters

The right training metrics have the power to both inform and transform your approach to employee development. Traditional metrics like completions and test scores are limited in scope. They tell you what happened, when it happened and what employees knew at a specific moment in time. While this information is useful, it’s far from sufficient to build a meaningful strategy.

Metrics like participation, confidence, achievement, behavior and feedback provide deeper insights into how employees are engaging with training and how that engagement drives meaningful business outcomes. By prioritizing these overlooked metrics, you can create a more personalized, effective and continuous learning experience. This not only helps employees feel supported in their development but also ensures your training program delivers measurable results. 

JD Dillon, Chief Learning Architect

JD Dillon became an expert on frontline training and enablement over two decades working in operations and talent development with dynamic organizations, including Disney, Kaplan and AMC. A respected author and speaker in the workplace learning community, JD also continues to apply his passion for helping frontline employees around the world do their best work every day in his role as Axonify's Chief Learning Architect.

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