Employee evaluation is a significant process for any organisation, as being able to identify your staff’s strengths and weaknesses is integral to organisational growth. This is also a main contributor to employee training and development. Assessing employee strengths and weaknesses is the first step in determining the type of training employees need. Investment in training is vital, not only to provide development opportunities and support employees acquiring new skills, but also to build upon employee aptitude and current performance.

The ‘4 Step Approach to Learning’ can help successfully evaluate staff performance in any industry. The use of pre and post-assessments after initial training expands the value of the one-off session, and helps employers identify employees who may be struggling with important topics that need to be used in everyday work situations. There may also be employees who are ‘confidently incompetent’, and using their knowledge incorrectly which can be potentially harmful to organisations.

Step 1 – Classroom training and conventional e-learning

Implementing spaced learning and assessments extends the value of any initial training session, whether it consists of traditional classroom training or completion of LMS modules. 

One-time training delivery, however, fails to consider a key flaw: the human brain. Studies suggest that we can forget up to 80% of knowledge after just one day. Continual reinforcement can help employees beat the forgetting curve and significantly improve knowledge retention. 

Step 2 – Certainty Based Marking (CBM) pre-assessment

A pre-assessment is essential for measuring employees’ baseline knowledge. Adding CBM also means you can identify which employees are currently ‘confidently incompetent’, and who may need additional learning support. CBM assessments use multiple-choice questions, but before selecting their answer employees must rate their certainty. This ranges from ‘High’ to ‘Low’, encouraging more careful consideration of the answer and cutting out guesswork. 

Step 3 – Personalised Spaced Repetition

The idea of Spaced Repetition is to introduce time intervals between learning sessions, in order to successfully move information from the short-term memory to the long-term memory. 

Learners will see approximately 10 questions a day in a ‘daily drill’ where, instead of filling in the answer, we reveal it to them! They are then presented with options to rate how well they knew the answer, from ‘I knew it!’ to ‘I didn’t know it’. These ratings are what makes our Spaced Repetition personalised, as an algorithm works in the background to schedule a point in the future to repeat that question again. If the learner knew the answer, they will see the question less frequently; if they didn’t know the answer, it will appear more frequently. 

Step 4 – CBM post-assessment

A post-assessment can be administered to measure employees’ knowledge retention after a month of Spaced Repetition training. Employers then get a clear depiction of employee progression that allows them to measure how successful the training approach was, and achieve clear ROI. 

The 4 Step Approach to Learning offers employers opportunities to systematically track employee progression and identify areas of improvement. In addition to this, the A/B results of the CBM pre and post-assessment also demonstrate clear ROI from microlearning, and how effectively knowledge has been retained – justifying the investment in employee learning. 

Rather than relying on one-off training sessions, taking a blended approach to learning can help effectively reinforce knowledge and extend the longevity of classroom training. Continual digital reinforcement is what makes Wranx an effective component of a blended learning programme – without this reinforcement, people can begin losing up to 90% of the information within just a few weeks of learning it. This will improve the customer experience and satisfaction within any industry, having a positive, long-term effect on the company overall.