Hi there. My organization recently completed our first supervisor survey to measure perceptions of performance improvement after training interventions. We now have a benchmark; however, I would like to brief my management on how we fared from an "industry standard" perspective. For those who use supervisor surveys, is there any research that shows an industry standard percentage that can be considered "acceptable" for the training organization to questions such as, "Is the employee applying his/her newly learned skills and knowledge on the job?" and "Do you see an improvement in the employee's productivity after training?"
Thanks much for your insights!

If you are going to survey anybody after a training event, the questions should be specific to the expected outcomes of said training event.

For example, if a participant attended training to help improve his/her widget-making abilities, the after-class survey should ask about the quality and quantity of the employee's widgets.

I am disappointed that there are not more opinions out there than the one that was expressed, and which didn't actually address my question. Surely there are others out there who are conducting supervisory surveys to find out whether bosses recognize improvement in performance after employees attend training? Please share your stories!!

You said "industry standard" perspective, yes? Perhaps you could clarify your question? What are you expecting people to give you?

KA....

There may well be companies out there who are willing to assert they have the data you seek. Just like there are those who assert they maintain normative data for their proprietary surveys employed across an industry group. Problem is...even if the data exist it has no real utility for your company. Unless you are using the same survey, in the same setting you cannot expect to pull data that is useful even for comparative purposes. An interesting conversation maybe...but not anything to use for making decisions.

Trust what you know. Use your own newly collected data as a baseline and work from there. Your local norms matter most because they are tied to your organization's culture, language and performance expectations.

To your question about application experiences...... for L3 evals I prefer to go after feedback via two surveys.

One that asks for feedback (you original questions) from those in a position to observe the behavior (supervisors, managers, et al),

A second survey that asks only the employee/students about how the organization is using, encouraging, supporting their new skill set.

Not surprisingly, the two track pretty well. When class participants say they are being encouraged and supported (coached/mentored/recognized/rewarded) the feedback from supervisors often reflects satisfaction with performance change.