Training Completion Rate

What the training completion rate is

The training completion rate (معدل إتمام التدريب) is the share of people who completed a training programme out of those to whom it was assigned or who enrolled in it, multiplied by 100. If a programme was assigned to 80 employees and 60 completed it, the rate is 60 ÷ 80 × 100 = 75%. It answers a simple question: of the people the organisation asked to train, how many actually finished the training?

The figure is drawn from a learning management system, the system that hosts the content and records who completed it and when. The figure does not stand in for the question of effect: completing a course does not imply that the employee learned, and not completing it does not show how much of the programme the employee took in.

When is an employee counted as having completed

The word allows more than one meaning, and the figure can be compared with other figures only when the meaning is fixed:

• Opening all the units. It is the easiest definition and the weakest, because an opened page does not mean that anyone read it.
• Passing a test. The employee reaches a stated mark, so the figure shows that enough correct answers were given, and not merely that the employee passed through the content.
• Attending a stated share of the sessions. It suits classroom training.

Within one programme the figures differ with the definition, so the definition is written with the figure and does not change between one period and the next. The figure becomes misleading when a programme contains optional units and completing all of them is required, because an employee who finished everything needed and left one extra unit is counted as not completed. So completion is defined by the required units alone. In a programme that combines two methods, as in blended learning, it must be settled whether completion means completing both parts together or one of them.

Who goes into the denominator of the training completion rate

This is the largest point of disagreement, and the choices are several:

• Those to whom the programme was assigned. It is the widest base, and it includes people who did not open the programme. It measures the response of the whole organisation.
• Those who started. Whoever did not start is left out, so the figure measures the programme’s ability to keep the people who entered it.
• Those whose deadline has fallen due. A person whose deadline has not yet arrived is removed, because such a person is not counted as having fallen short while still within the allowed time.

The whole rate changes with the choice. Its formula is close to that of the application completion rate, which is the number of applications submitted divided by those started. But that rate measures a candidate’s application for a job, not an employee’s completion of training, and its denominator is a different group.

A course assigned to eighty employees

Take a hypothetical course assigned to 80 employees with a stated completion deadline. After the deadline their positions are these: 50 completed it on time, 10 completed it late, 12 started it and did not finish, and 8 did not open it. The total is 50 + 10 + 12 + 8 = 80. From the same numbers more than one rate emerges:

• Completion on time: 50 ÷ 80 × 100 = 62.5%.
• Completion at any time: (50 + 10) ÷ 80 × 100 = 75%.
• Completion among those who started: the number who started is 50 + 10 + 12 = 72, so the rate is 60 ÷ 72 × 100 = 83.3%.
• Start rate: 72 ÷ 80 × 100 = 90%.

The decimals are rounded to a tenth. Reading them together is more useful than reading any one of them. Ten percent did not open the course at all, which is a question about assignment or reminders. Of the 72 who started, 60 finished, and the 12 who stopped part way are the people to ask about the content.

The organisation then assigned the same course to 20 new employees whose deadline had not arrived and none of whom had yet completed it. If they are put into the denominator the rate becomes 60 ÷ 100 × 100 = 60%. Performance appears to have fallen from 75% to 60% although nothing that anyone did has changed. Removing those whose deadline has not arrived is a condition of a sound comparison.

When completion happens within the allowed time

A completion curve shows what the final figure does not. In the same course the number who completed reached 18 by the end of the first week, 36 by the end of the second, and 50 at the deadline at the end of the third. The cumulative shares of the 80 are 18 ÷ 80 = 22.5%, 36 ÷ 80 = 45%, and 50 ÷ 80 = 62.5%. Of the 50 who completed on time, 32 did so after the first week.

This suggests that a reminder a week before the deadline may help, not because employees are negligent, but because people postpone what is not yet due. To judge the course a failure on seeing 22.5% at the end of the first week would be hasty, since this shape may simply follow the pattern of work that has a deadline.

Should the completion rate of a mandatory programme be compared with a voluntary one?

It should not be, because someone who was obliged differs from someone who chose. Suppose 46 of 50 employees completed a mandatory programme set by the organisation’s decision, which is 46 ÷ 50 × 100 = 92%, and 18 of 45 employees completed a voluntary skills course, which is 18 ÷ 45 × 100 = 40%. The figures are hypothetical, and it would be wrong to conclude that the mandatory programme is better. Obligation can raise the figure, whereas choice measures people’s wish for the content. Each is judged for what it suits: the first shows whether the assignment arrived and whether anyone was obstructed, and the second shows whether the content persuaded people whom nobody obliged.

What completion shows, and what it does not

Completion shows that the employee passed through the programme. It shows nothing about any of the four questions that the Kirkpatrick model arranges in ascending levels: whether the participant was satisfied, whether the participant learned, whether the participant changed behaviour at work, and whether a measurable work result changed. An organisation that reaches 100% completion may know nothing about any of them.

Completion does not show financial benefit either, which training ROI calculates once the cost and the benefit have been defined. Completion is a precondition for the programme to have its intended effect. The figure also does not show whether the programme was needed in the first place. That question precedes the programme, and training needs analysis addresses it before the organisation spends a budget on a course.

What raises completion and what lowers it

• The length of the programme and its timing. A long programme in a crowded week is left unfinished by people who have no time. Spaced practice splits it into short sessions with intervals between them, which makes it easier to complete, and the total time may stay the same.
• Assignment without preparation. An employee receives an email asking for a course without knowing why, and postpones it.
• Reminders and checking. Completion rises with a reminder that reaches the employee before the deadline and with what the manager asks about it.
• Game elements. Gamification uses points and completion badges inside the learning management system, and it helps when the behaviour wanted is already worthwhile but needs a push to begin.
• A deadline that does not suit the work. A date that falls in the heaviest weeks of closing or of the season lowers completion however good the programme is, so a date is chosen that managers know in advance and arrange their schedules around.
• Obligation without meaning. The figure rises under pressure, then completion turns into clicking through the units without reading them, so the rate improves and the purpose is lost.

Training completion for a new employee

A single deadline does not suit everyone when people join on different days. So the completion deadline for a new employee is counted from the day the employee starts, thirty days for example, and not from a fixed date in the calendar. Otherwise someone who joined two days before the deadline appears negligent although the person has not seen the programme. This is part of the work of employee onboarding, and the question then is which first programmes must be completed early and which can be postponed.

Writing the figure in a report

A figure without its boundaries cannot be read, so the whole statement is written out: “Completion rate 75%, defined as completing all the units and passing the test, of those assigned whose deadline fell by the end of the quarter.” The elements are stated: the definition, the denominator and the period. This line prevents a reader from comparing the figure with another under a different definition, and keeps management from citing a rate measured under an easier condition.

The number of people assigned is added next to the percentage, because 75% of 80 employees means that twenty did not complete, whereas 75% of four means that one did not. If two of the four had not completed, the rate would be 50%, which may not signal any problem in the programme. With the count, the figure is seen at its true size.

What is done about those who did not complete

The first question is why. Someone who did not open the course may not be receiving the messages. Someone who stopped at the fifth unit may have found it obscure or long. Someone who found no time needs work lifted from the person, not blame. The natural place for this question is the one on one meeting between the employee and the manager, because it is a meeting whose agenda the employee holds.

An incomplete course is not handled as negligence before its causes have been established. An employee who is blamed learns to click in order to finish and does not learn the content, so the figure rises and the benefit is lost.

Our reading is that management should receive the completion rate broken down by department and by the module at which people stop, not one figure for the organisation. The single figure shows 75%, while a breakdown may show, in a hypothetical case, that many of those who did not complete stopped at the same module, so the content is repaired instead of employees being blamed.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.