13 Employee Training Metrics You Should Know [2025 Edition]
“With data collection, ‘the sooner the better’ is always the best answer,” former president of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer explains. And this couldn’t be truer when measuring your employee training efforts. The big question is – which metrics should you track?
According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, a top priority for L&D teams lies in aligning learning programs with business goals, closely followed by upskilling employees and fostering a learning culture.
To truly succeed in these areas, understanding and leveraging employee training metrics is essential. After all, as Peter Drucker famously said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” This mindset is critical for showing tangible results, making continuous improvements, and justifying training investments.
In this article, we’ll explore 13 key employee training metrics every HR and L&D professional should know. These metrics will help you track, measure, and refine your training efforts to ensure they’re engaging and advancing organizational goals.
For a broader look at essential HR metrics, download our 51 HR Metrics Cheat Sheet and start making data-driven decisions with confidence. Let’s dive in!
Contents
What are employee training metrics?
Why should you use training metrics for training evaluation?
13 employee training metrics examples
Where do you get this training data?
What are employee training metrics?
Employee training metrics are data points used to measure the effectiveness of an organization’s employee training programs. Companies use training metrics to get insights into how well their employees learn and apply new knowledge or skills.
The main focus of employee training metrics is effectiveness, but they also serve other functions, such as:
- Evaluating the success of a training program
- Using data points and insights to align the training with the organization’s goals.
- Evaluating different components of a training program.
Let’s look at an example of ‘employee training metrics in action.’
To drive sales, online clothing company Veste needs to improve its website’s SEO (search engine optimization) so that it can drive more leads and, ultimately, more sales. However, after a quick analysis, HR realized that its employees didn’t have the necessary SEO skills, so it provided them with a training course.
The use of employee training metrics here enables Veste to answer multiple questions, including:
- Is our website now better SEO-optimized?
- Were the employees satisfied with the training they received?
- Has there been a noticeable increase in leads?
- Has there been an increase in sales?
Results become apparent when a clear goal is linked to the training. Let’s say that in the example mentioned above, Veste’s goal is to increase website visits by 15% over six months. In that case, they can provide the right level of training to achieve this and, thus, measure training metrics against this specific business metric.
Why should you use training metrics for training evaluation?
Using employee training metrics in your training evaluation allows you to make data-driven decisions. It removes bias and avoids decisions being made based on thin air.
From an organizational perspective, training metrics offer several advantages:
- They ensure training programs focus on the skills and capabilities the organization needs to develop
- Metrics help evaluate the effectiveness of training, enabling real-time adjustments if outcomes are lacking
- They link training efforts to broader organizational goals by measuring improvements in productivity and performance
- Metrics demonstrate ROI through tangible outcomes, such as cost-benefit analysis, faster time to proficiency, and measurable impact on results
- They reduce compliance risks by ensuring adherence to regulatory competence standards where required.
At the individual level, training metrics underscore the organization’s commitment to employee growth and development. This can significantly enhance retention by showing employees their value to the company. Additionally, metrics help identify and address skills gaps, providing clarity on where development is needed and how progress is unfolding. They also support personalization by tailoring training to individual performance and needs.
A TalentLMS survey found that 22% of employees view training and development opportunities as the most appreciated form of recognition at work. A lack of training, on the other hand, can push employees to look for options elsewhere.
Using training metrics can be a simple yet effective way to show your employees the value of the investments made in them.
Drive training impact with metrics that matter
Understanding the right employee training metrics to track is essential for understanding the impact of your L&D initiatives.
In AIHR’s Learning & Development Certificate Program, you’ll explore the key metrics that show how training initiatives drive performance, boost engagement, and contribute to organizational success.
Learn to evaluate training ROI, retention rates, and knowledge application—ensuring your L&D efforts are purposeful, data-driven, and impactful.
13 employee training metrics examples
In your training evaluation, you can use various metrics based on your goals, such as measuring effectiveness, satisfaction, and engagement, planning the training budget, boosting participation and pass rates, or assessing business outcomes.
Here are 13 common employee training metrics examples:
1. Training cost per employee
This is a straightforward metric. It divides the total cost of training by the number of employees. This can be for a specific program or the sum of all training done in a particular year. The formula would be as follows:
Training cost per employee = Cost of training / Number of employees
For example, let’s say your company has 75 employees and that your annual training costs $100,000.
Training cost per employee = $100,000 / 75 = $1,333.33
According to a Training Industry Report, companies spent an average of $954 per learner (compared to $1207 the previous year). This information enables you to get an idea of whether or not you are overspending in comparison and whether or not that is justified. You can also use this information to determine your training budget for next year.
2. Learner engagement
Learner engagement measures the time and effort learners invest in the learning process. It means that people are taking the time to sign up and process the training material produced.
While there is no exact metric to measure this, there are some engagement statistics you can look at. This includes time spent on modules or courses. Most LMS systems have these features built in. Naturally, the more time a learner spends on the learning platform interacting with its various features, the more engaged they are.
However, this may not always be true, as in some cases, people are just ‘clicking’ through the modules without learning. To measure engagement, you should combine it with other metrics such as course completion, learner satisfaction ratings, and employee performance.
3. Training Return on Investment
Training return on investment (ROI) measures the efficiency or profitability of the money you put into the training. It is usually linked to greater revenue and business impact. You don’t need to measure the ROI of every training initiative in your organization. Typically, you track this key metric for the top 5% of the most impactful training programs.
A popular way to measure training ROI is:
Training ROI = (Return of benefit – Investment cost) / Investment cost x 100
Let’s say you spent $45,000 on training to increase the speed of your customer service reps resolving issues. As a result, they increased customer satisfaction and sales, which led to an increase of $100,000 in net profit from sales. Therefore:
($100,000 – $45,000) / 45 000 x 100 = 122% return on investment of training.
4. Training experience satisfaction
This is one of the most popular training metrics. It is usually found in a post-training survey and gauges how satisfied learners are with the training they received.
A good way to measure this is by using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) on a scale from 1 to 10 with the question, “How likely are you to recommend this training to a friend or colleague?” This gives a clear view of learner satisfaction and their likelihood of recommending the training.
NPS results can help gauge success: a score between 0 and 30 is considered good, above 30 is excellent, and anything below 0 may indicate issues that need attention.
HR tip
Consider ways to recognize people’s learning efforts and accomplishments. Encourage managers to come up with ideas together with their team members and think of ways to recognize people on a company level.
5. Operational efficiency
If done effectively, training should increase operational efficiency and address the specific skill gaps needed to optimize workplace processes.
For example, if your team currently misses 40% of deadlines, a focused training program could help reduce that rate—ideally to 20% or even 5% over time.
You can track improvements in operational efficiency by comparing metrics such as “time to repair,” “time to recover,” “time to failure,” or “cost-per-click” before and after training. This approach gives a clear view of the training’s impact on performance.
6. Course enrollment data
This metric tracks the number of employees who sign up for the course and can help you refine your communication strategy for promoting training.
A/B testing is useful here. You can test different messages, images, and email subject lines to see which approach gets the best response. This data also indicates whether the training offered resonates with employees.
Small actions, like encouraging managers to promote the course to their teams, can boost enrollment, and you can track how these efforts improve participation over time.
7. Course completion rate
Great—employees have signed up! However, if only 50 out of 1,000 participants complete the entire course, it may indicate an issue with engagement or course structure. The course completion rate shows how much of the course each learner actually finishes.
To boost completion rates, consider creative strategies like adding gamification elements or breaking the content into shorter, manageable segments. These approaches can make the course more engaging and encourage participants to see it through to the end.
8. Learner drop-off rate
This is again an indication of how many learners either started a course and did not complete it or decided to leave the course. It is a measure of the quality of the content of the training materials, or it may even indicate browser compatibility issues in online learning platforms.
Tracking exactly where learners drop off in the course can provide insight into specific sections that might need improvement or adjustment. This helps pinpoint any content or technical issues affecting completion.
HR tip
Ensure that employees actually have the time to start and complete a training and that managers encourage them to do so. Often, people have so much work to do that there is little to no time left for them to spend on training.
9. Assessment pass rate and Assessment scores
The assessment pass rate measures the number of people who passed or failed a course. For example, if 200 employees took a final test and only 45 passed, the pass rate would be 22.5%.
A low pass rate can suggest that the assessment may be particularly challenging or intentionally designed to filter out top performers. If scores are unexpectedly low, possible causes should be investigated. Have the students taken too long to complete the course and forgotten what they learned at the beginning? Or were the questions unnecessarily detailed?
Sometimes, passing an assessment is compulsory, and people must retake it until they pass. For compliance or regulatory training, tracking these pass rates is essential for reporting purposes, ensuring your organization meets the required standards.
10. Employee performance post-training
This metric tracks how employee performance improves over time following training. Depending on the skill’s complexity, the impact may show up immediately or take a while to become evident.
You can measure this by comparing key performance metrics—such as individual sales numbers, first-call resolution rates, or even revenue per employee at the organizational level—before and after training.
Again, like with the training ROI, you only measure this for your most impactful training programs.
11. Knowledge retention rate
The knowledge retention rate is related to the previous training metric. After all, the higher people’s knowledge retention, the higher their post-training performance should be, and the more the organization can benefit from it.
Retention can be assessed through quizzes, post-training tests, or surveys. Without regular application, most people forget around 75% of new information within six days, a phenomenon known as the “forgetting curve.”
This is why at AIHR, for example, we use the Tell-Show-Do-Apply method for all of our training courses; the learning journey naturally flows from building knowledge through video lessons (tell and show) to practicing its application and building skills with hands-on exercises and assignments (do and apply). The Tell-Show-Do-Apply methodology ensures that learners retain knowledge while maximizing the learning impact.
12. Time to competence
Time to competence measures the average time it takes people to acquire the skills and competencies taught during training. This metric offers insight into the effectiveness of both the training content and delivery method.
For example, a longer time to competence could indicate that the course content doesn’t fully match employees’ needs or that the training delivery doesn’t work optimally. A shorter time to competence, on the other hand, may indicate that the course instructor is capable of delivering the content clearly and engagingly.
13. Devices used
Every employee has a preferred learning method and a preferred device for that. Some may opt for their laptop, whereas others will choose their phone.
Knowing the devices people use to complete their training can help you better adapt it and make it more user-friendly. It may also boost your learner engagement levels, as employees who are able to follow training on their favorite devices are more likely to engage with the content.
Where do you get this training data?
To get the data for your employee training metrics, you can look in various places, including:
- The Learning Management System (LMS): If your organization has an LMS, it stores all master data, such as course completion rates, sign-up rates, assessment scores, pass rates, and a couple of engagement metrics.
- Surveys: Employee surveys can be an excellent way to gather data such as satisfaction scores and qualitative data on the effectiveness of the training provided.
- Focus groups: Sometimes, conducting an employee focus group to have an honest and open conversation about the training received can be helpful.
- Employee performance data: This data reveals any performance improvements over time that may be linked to the training.
- Managers: Managers can be useful sources of feedback in two ways: They can share insights from one-on-one discussions with team members about the impact of training on productivity and skills, and they can provide their own observations on whether team members are applying new skills, showing higher engagement, or taking more initiative.
A final word
If, like the companies in the LinkedIn survey mentioned at the beginning of this article, you want to align your organization’s learning programs to business goals and upskill your employees, effective employee training is essential. Tracking the right employee training metrics, like the ones mentioned in this article, helps you to ensure this.
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