Date

The Power of Training Data

The top 5 areas that companies collect data and performance analytics are:

  • Customer acquisition and retention
  • Marketing
  • Risk Management
  • Innovation and product development
  • Supply chain

While data obviously drives company performance, you can see from the above list that training isn’t among the top reasons that companies collect data. In fact, we would venture to say that many companies don’t collect performance analytics for training.  Why is that? Employees are the single most important thing a company should invest in.  They handle customers, create and implement marketing strategies, oversee risk management, and manage innovations and supply chains and they sell and service everything companies produce or provide. They put the verbs in all those noun clauses — they are the action catalysts. Without high-performing employees, big data would be nearly useless. For this reason, companies should focus on training analytics for both trainers and trainees.

The five primary  types of big data that companies use are:

  • Predictive Data – Uses patterns to analyze what might happen.
  • Prescriptive Data – Prescribes next steps based on data input.
  • Diagnostic Data – Analyzes what has happened in the past and why. Used to implement changes.
  • Descriptive Data – Describes what is happening in the present. This fast-acting data is delivered in real time.
  • Outcome Data – Analyzes consumer behavior to help companies make better choices.

Most of this data is used to help companies understand their consumers and market trends, but why not use available technology to genuinely understand your team’s performance when it comes to training and learning? Use it to find out what works and what doesn’t in your virtual training programs.   Understand learning challenges to reduce learner dissatisfaction by personalizing the learning experience.  Use it to pinpoint training flaws, areas where more in-depth training is needed, to innovate new training methods based on your learners, and to improve engagement and performance from training.

Jigsaw Interactive provides a full series of analytics that fit all 5 primary categories as they relate to training programs along with employee and trainer data that helps define critical outcomes and why.

Personalize the Learning Experience

Companies that use data analytics can create L&D opportunities utilizing hard and fast, objective data.  If lack of engagement is due to trainers not utilizing engagement tools to their fullest, coaching the training team will correct this.  If lack of engagement is due to lecture based training where the learners can do nothing but listen, knowing this will help instructional designers and trainers build programs that allow the learners to actively work together while having the ability to review information individually. When training is personalized and immersive,  learners feel empowered to own their learning and will commit more fully to the experience, making it more powerful for everyone.

Pinpoint Learning Challenges

You’ve all heard the adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” of course, but the opposite is also true. “If it ain’t working, fix it!” You know your training isn’t effective when you see unsatisfactory results or no one engages during training. If that happens, speculations regarding what went wrong are rarely helpful. With learning behavior and performance analytics, you can pinpoint exactly what did and did not happen during training.  This data can be sorted any number of ways to help determine best next steps for improving.

Innovate New Methods

Once you’ve identified what portion of the challenges belong to the trainer, you can use the data to understand the what’s and how’s to generate new training and engagement strategies. Data-driven innovations are those based on hard objective facts collected during training. You can base your changes on techniques that have been proven to get learners engaged.

Improve Engagement

Corporate training, especially virtual training, has long had the reputation of being boring, and nothing shuts down learning faster than boredom. Using the five types of data through a powerful data analytics dashboard, you can improve virtual engagement by understanding the critical details of your learners.

Data analytics are not a new approach to sales and marketing, but they are a powerful, underutilized resource to improve your company’s training and learning programs.   

LinkedIn
Twitter
Facebook
Email