7 Insightful Survey Questions for Training Effectiveness

Henry Ford famously said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”

Your business runs at its best when your employees are educated and trained correctly. Before you send your newly-trained workers out into the field, you must know that they know what they’re doing. One way to measure their knowledge and preparedness is to have them complete a survey. A well-prepared survey can clarify who needs more help in particular areas as well as how you may need to modify your future training practices.

Here are some essential survey questions to help you evaluate your training effectiveness.

Did you need training to prepare you for this job?

In any industry, you will get new hires who have no prior experience with the industry, people with extensive experience, and everyone in between. Including a question like this in your survey will help you to evaluate how much information each trainee had about the job before their training began. If they were already experts in the field, their answers on how the training equipped them for their role would be different than those who are learning about the job for the first time.

Did you complete the objectives for this training program?

Each training program should have clear and direct objectives that you want every trainee to know and understand before their first day on the job. Your objectives could be anything from understanding the company’s values and mission statement to learning worksite safety procedures or how to operate specific machinery. After adequate training, your new hires should be able to answer this question with a confident “yes.” If not, it’s time to reconsider your training process.

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Was the training program easy to understand?

This question offers insight into the clarity of the training and how easy each section was to comprehend. This can be applied to the way that the information was presented or the resources that trainees were given during the program. If there are any multimedia elements, such as videos or audio recordings, ask about how easy these elements were to see, hear, and understand.

Were you given everything you needed to be successful throughout your training?

An effective training program will equip trainees with all of the necessary documentation, resources, tools, and education they need to be successful. If trainees feel like they weren’t given adequate support, this question will allow you to modify which resources you offer during training. Improvements here can result in trainees who feel more educated and confident about their role within the company.

How would you describe your trainer?

This is arguably one of the most important questions your trainees will answer. This question gives you insight into the practices and methodologies of your company’s trainers. Hopefully, workers will report that the trainer was patient, easy to understand, knowledgeable, and professional. If they don’t, however, it gives you the information you need to retrain your trainers or find someone else who is better equipped for this responsibility.

What feedback do you have regarding the training process?

Every survey should give trainees an option to offer feedback and suggestions regarding the training experience. This should be an open-ended question that asks for honest feedback regarding all aspects of the training process.

Often, this is a question that many trainees leave blank. Either they don’t know what to say or they don’t think their feedback is valuable. One way to ensure you get feedback about the training process is to make this question mandatory before the trainee can move on with the survey. Other ideas to elicit feedback include asking trainees for ideas on how to make future training sessions more engaging, easy to understand, and organized.

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Was this training organized and engaging?

A vital component of any training process is engagement. Is your training program set up so that trainees can actively engage in their learning? Are they being taught and shown what to do or just being told? This question will help you gauge the organization and flow of the training process so you can make adjustments based on the feedback you receive.

One way to frame this question is by asking trainees how they’d rate the engagement of their training. Did they feel like they were an active participant in their education or simply a bystander?

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The idea behind requiring trainees to complete a survey is to get honest and accurate information about the effectiveness of your training programs. Device Magic Mobile Forms make it easy to create a custom survey specifically for your trainees, your training processes, and your company. The effectiveness of your training procedures directly impacts the productivity of your business. Start building your survey for free today.