Since the goal of safety training programs is to equip and enable employees to work without incident or injury, you must evaluate your training’s effectiveness at achieving these goals.
Indeed, in OSHA’s Seven-Step Voluntary Training Guidelines, Step 6 is “Evaluating Program Effectiveness.” Here’s what the OSHA Guidelines recommend:
“To make sure that the training program is accomplishing its goals, an evaluation of the training can be valuable. Training should have, as one of its critical components, a method of measuring the effectiveness of the training. A plan for evaluating the training session(s), either written or thought-out by the employer, should be developed when the course objectives and content are developed. It should not be delayed until the training has been completed. Evaluation will help employers or supervisors determine the amount of learning achieved and whether an employee’s performance has improved on the job.”
The Guidelines list three evaluation methods. For this training tip, we’ll focus on Method 1: Student Opinion—Questionnaires or informal discussions with employees can help employers determine the relevance and appropriateness of the training program.
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Here is a sample program evaluation questionnaire that you can adapt to your own training sessions to collect student-employee opinions on how effective your training has been.
Title of program: _____________
Date(s): _____________
1. The course met the objectives stated at the beginning of the session.
__Yes __No
2. The information that was delivered during the training program was:
__Extremely useful __Very useful __Somewhat useful __Not useful at all
3. The amount of time and attention given to each subject in the course was:
__Too much __Just right __Not enough
4. Will you be able to easily apply what you have learned?
__Yes __No __Not sure
5. Was the trainer knowledgeable about the subject matter?
__Yes __No
6. Was the trainer open to questions? __Yes __No
Indicate your overall evaluation of the program (i.e., content, delivery, subject matter).
__Excellent __Good __Fair __Poor
7. Best feature/part of the training program: _____________
8. Worst feature/part of the training program: _____________
General comments: _____________
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Make it a priority to read through all of your trainees’ evaluation forms. Seriously consider comments about what didn’t work, as well as suggestions for how to make your training more effective. After all, who knows better how effective the training was than those who went through it?
Why It Matters
- Safety training is a considerable expense at most organizations.
- The ROI is very high, however, in preventing even more costly incidents and injuries.
- The high ROI will only be achieved, however, if safety training is effective at equipping and enabling employees to work safely, without incident or injury.