It’s a good idea to look deeper into the performance of your training programs to improve total employee L&D effectiveness while retaining business profitability. That’s where auditing learning and development comes in. In this article, let’s walk through the four steps on how to audit a training program.
What is a Learning and Development audit?
A learning & development audit is an essential process for measuring the quality of a company’s training program. The audit process assists in properly understanding the training requirements regarding engagement, achievement, and productivity benchmarks.
Why should you audit your organization’s training programs?
Organizational transformation should indeed match the rate of ongoing change within organizations. Therefore, L&D teams should always coordinate, adjust, and acknowledge this change.
Auditing your organization’s training program is the best way to adapt to constantly changing performance and productivity requirements. This process helps to:
- Compare the company’s performance to L&D benchmarks in the industry.
- Assess the efficiency of the current L&D strategies & making suggestions for improvement areas.
- Ensure that training programs align with the objectives of your organization.
- Highlight learning and performance gaps through employee training.
- Identify and understand your learner’s preferences.
Critical areas for evaluating your training program
There are 5 factors to consider when evaluating your training program, including:
- #1: Learning and Development Strategy
- #2: The L&D Procedure Within the company
- #3: Stack of technologies
- #4: Training budgets
- #5: Your training resources
#1: Learning and development strategy
L&D strategy is an essential aspect of the learning & development audit. The audit must concentrate on two main parts of developing an L&D strategy within the firm.
- Training Needs Analysis (TNA) is the procedure by which the business identifies the employees’ needs for training and development so that staff can perform their jobs well. It includes a thorough analysis of the training needs at various organizational levels. During this procedure, auditors must assess if L&D strategies align with training goals and performance.
- Learning Needs Analysis (LNA) identifies the difference between the desired and the existing skills, knowledge, and abilities. Once you address this gap, you can decide on the training needed.
LNA requires auditors to have a deep knowledge of the learning metrics used to track and assess employee performance. Also, auditors must comprehend how the business gathers and handles feedback and data from learner analytics.
Recommend reading:
#2: The L&D Procedure Within the company
As businesses evolve, so do their learning and development procedures. A process audit will concentrate on the following areas:
- Making a record of the training process includes best practices, rules, and regulations.
- Opportunities to save money: It outlines the reasons to keep using some procedures and the benefits of examining, improving, or getting rid of other procedures.
- Room to increase the capacity of L&D includes: utilizing strategic partnerships, contracting internal operations, and outsourcing L&D procedures.
#3: Stack of technologies
To ensure the L&D process is well-equipped to support efficient training and development, the audit should verify the following.
- Communication and collaboration tools
- Training design, development, and delivery tools
- Data learning and analysis platforms
- Other technologies include
- Project management
- Content management
- And learning management systems (LMS).
#4: Training budgets
Two essential components in any audit of an L&D budget include:
- Return on investment calculation: you need to outline the financial gains (returns) from training investments (costs). From this cost-benefit analysis, the company will find why to keep funding L&D even during an economic crisis.
- Actuals versus plans: You need to compare anticipated and actual budgeting expenses. Remember to accurately audit excessive spending and underspending as they can negatively impact your training program’s effectiveness and quality.
Recommend reading:
#5: Your Training Resources
L&D auditors must assess the entire learning resources of the organization from start to finish. Training resource includes the following:
- Available educational materials through a variety of channels.
- Different methods & techniques for creating individualized training experiences: personalized reskilling and upskilling.
- Platforms, tools, and technologies for delivering training,
How to audit a training program
Here are a few essential things to take for a successful L&D audit.
Step 1: Create a list of training programs
Make a list of the training programs you’ve established and those programs that learners can access through your learning platforms. This list will help you audit each training program to guarantee its relevance and effectiveness.
Step 2: Examine data and learners’ feedback.
Analyzing student feedback and statistics may enhance your audit for future training programs. For instance, when performing your audit, take note of:
- Which training programs do learners attend the most
- How well learners perform in each one.
It’s necessary to alter a training program if most of your staff are struggling with it. In this manner, you can establish a better L&D audit for highly-skilled staff and the workplace.
Recommend reading:
Step 3: Examine the performance of your staff members.
Don’t forget to assess staff members’ performance before enrolling them in training sessions. You should evaluate how their present training compares to their historical performance.
Step 4: Connect your training initiatives with the company’s objectives.
Ensure your training program is tied to the organization’s goals for increased productivity, profitability, and employee upskilling/reskilling.
Recommend reading:
Conclusion
Enhancing employee performance requires conducting a learning and development audit. It concentrates on underdeveloped areas and skill or knowledge deficiencies. It’s a helpful tool for business representatives who want to increase staff performance, productivity, and engagement while quickening organizational change.
Read more:
Favorite post
5 Best Animated Video Production Companies [Update 2023]
Top Animated ELearning Video Company (2023 Update)
Trending now
Top 12 Amazing Training Video Production Companies In 2023
5 Best Animated Video Production Companies [Update 2023]
