Training Feedback: The Secret to Better Sessions

When your work life revolves around training, it can sometimes feel like you talk, explain, comment, and correct all day. But, do you ever take the time to listen?

Gathering honest feedback on your training sessions helps you understand whether they’re actually effective and how they can be better. When they’re done right, post-training evaluations provide actionable advice on how to tweak your training content so it hits home with your learners and cultivates an interest in long-term learning.

It can be a little nerve-wracking to open your employee training sessions to real feedback, but we’ll show you below why it’s a vital part of building a learning program that really makes a difference for learners in your organization.

What's so great about training feedback?

We know you’re a trained professional, and you pour hours of hard work into every session you develop. But if you don’t gather feedback after your trainings, your hard work essentially amounts to guess work.

No matter how much you’ve studied and read about developing training, the fact is that every organization is different. The only way to know for sure if a training session is working in your organization is to ask your learners whether it helped them or not. And if it didn’t, how can it be better in the future?

Helps you create better training courses next time

As an enablement professional, your first obligation is to your learners – without them, your training programs would never get off the ground. Their engagement is key to your success, so their opinions should be a crucial part of how you develop materials and syllabi.

When you ask for learner feedback, you can use their responses to create more focused training materials that respond to authentic learner needs. You’re no longer creating in a vacuum, but taking their notes on board and responding with changes that will help improve their learning.

Starts conversations about your training programs

But asking your learners for feedback goes deeper than just refining the training materials. It’s also important for deepening employee engagement with your training program.

Requesting learner feedback opens your program to conversation and, crucially, invites learners to be a part of it. Suddenly, your training goals become their learning goals, because they can see that they’re a vital part of training development. They’re not being told what to learn – they’re being trained on the topics that are relevant to their own professional success.

Allows you to show how you're improving training programs for better ROI

Asking for feedback helps you gauge training effectiveness with real-life metrics – the kind that speak volumes to your stakeholders.

Plus, you’ll be able to use training feedback to show how you’re planning continuous improvement for your training programs and charting a course towards even more impressive learning outcomes.

Including a post-training survey is an easy way to make your sessions better than ever, and adding one is super simple with the right tools, like corporate learning management software.

Training feedback sample questions you should ask after every session

Online employee training surveys should be a routine part of every training session, and these questions can help you gather valuable feedback to strengthen your training program’s effectiveness and enrich the training experience.

Which parts of the training were engaging, and which had you a little lost? It’s essential that you collect feedback on the elements of your training that resonated with learners and the ones that maybe missed the mark. Apply those findings directly to new sessions and update older ones accordingly.
Did you think the presenter’s style was effective? Training session feedback should allow learners to weigh in on more than just your content. Presentation style has a dramatic effect on whether learners engage with the content, so make sure you’re hooking your audience with a style that suits them.
What do you wish had been covered in the training that was left out? This question lets you pinpoint gaps in your content. You can use this feedback to enrich the content and make it super-relavant to learners.
Can you apply anything you learned in this training to your job role? One of the most important training feedback survey questions you can ask is whether learners will use your training in their real-life job roles. Your ultimate goal should be providing practical training that shares advice learners can put into action immediately.
Would you recommend this training to a colleague? Why or why not? Word-of-mouth recommendations are the pinnacle of a job well done. If learners recommend your sessions, it’s a sign that they find them exceptionally valuable and they’re willing to attach their name and professional reputation to the recommendation. If they wouldn’t recommend your session, you can learn why and how to improve it.

Things to keep in mind about your post-training surveys

When planning your training feedback form, keep these tips in mind. They’ll help you create a training feedback template that gets helpful advice from your learners.

Positive feedback isn’t necessarily helpful

We all love a pat on the back, but sometimes it’s actually the negative feedback that tells you more about your training. When you’re collecting training feedback, be sure to stress to participants that you want honest answers – not just nice ones.

Keep the language conversational

You’ll get higher participation numbers in your post-training surveys if the questions are easy to understand. When you’re composing questions, don’t try to sound like a data analyst. Just ask your questions in your most straightforward, human-centered language.

Don’t ask too many essay-style questions

Essay questions are brilliant for eliciting detailed responses. But they might be a bit tiring for learners who’ve just spent several hours in a training session. Include multiple choice and yes/no questions in your survey, too, so your learners don’t get survey fatigue.

Time your survey sending strategically

Wait a few hours or even a full day before asking your learners to offer feedback. That way, you give them a break from your content and allow them time to reflect on the session. But don’t wait too long, or they’ll disengage from the session and be less likely to participate in the survey.

It’s easier with professional software

The easiest way to gather online training feedback is by using dedicated learning software. With the right software tool, you can:

Create your training materials
Include interactive elements in your sessions
Schedule and assign sessions
Tailor learning journeys to each learner
Collect feedback at the right time from participants
Use your feedback to track learning metrics and generate graphs

LearnRight is the best-in-class corporate learning management system that lets you evaluate and tweak your current sessions while gathering data that shapes your future training programs. It’s the best learning software for creating training that’s engaging, responsive, and informed. Schedule a demo!