Satisfaction, pass and employment rates: calculating and publishing your performance indicators

“98% satisfied clients”: the claim adorns half of all training providers’ websites — often with no date, no calculation base, no source. Yet the National Quality Framework makes it a precise requirement: indicator 2 requires the publication of performance indicators that are suited, dated, sourced and updated. Done well, it is both guaranteed compliance and a genuine commercial argument. Here are the rates to calculate, with their formulas, and how to publish them.

What the framework actually requires

Indicator 2 (criterion 1, on public information) requires the publication of performance indicators suited to the nature of the services and audiences. Three practical consequences:

• No single list: an office-skills provider, a skills-assessment centre and an apprenticeship centre do not publish the same rates.
• Verifiable figures: the auditor can ask for the calculation base — the link between the displayed rate and the satisfaction surveys or attendance records must be reconstructible.
• Living figures: dated, with their reference period, and updated regularly.

For apprenticeship centres, indicator 3 adds specific rates (diploma achievement, further study, employment outcomes, contract terminations), largely fed by the public InserJeunes system.

The four core rates, with their formulas

1. Satisfaction rate

Standard formula: number of respondents “satisfied or very satisfied” (or scoring ≥ 8/10) ÷ number of respondents × 100, over a defined period. Always publish the base: “92% satisfaction — 87 respondents out of 103 trainees, 2025 sessions.” The underlying question must stay stable from one session to the next, otherwise the rate is no longer comparable.

2. Completion (or attendance) rate

Hours actually attended ÷ planned hours × 100, from attendance sheets or connection logs for distance learning. It is also an internal steering indicator: an eroding rate flags a problem that indicator 12 on dropout prevention requires you to address.

3. Pass rate

For certifying courses: successful candidates ÷ candidates who sat the exam × 100. Specify the denominator — “sat” and “enrolled” give very different rates, and the gap between the two (the presentation rate) is itself an indicator that can be required. The distinction between certifying and qualifying training determines whether this rate concerns you.

4. Recommendation or return-to-employment rate

Depending on your audiences: Net Promoter Score, employment rate at 6 months (measured through the post-course evaluation), dropout rate. Choose one or two indicators that genuinely speak to your buyers rather than a decorative battery.

Why satisfaction is not enough

Publishing a satisfaction rate is necessary; settling for it is misleading. The reference meta-analysis by Alliger, Tannenbaum, Bennett, Traver and Shotland, published in 1997 in Personnel Psychology (“A meta-analysis of the relations among training criteria”), measured the correlation between training evaluation levels: trainee reactions (“I liked it”) only weakly predict actual learning and transfer to the workplace. The operational translation: a provider publishing satisfaction and pass and attendance rates demonstrates far more than an isolated “98%” — and that is exactly the spirit of the framework’s “suited indicators,” which connects to your learning assessment methods.

Where and how to publish

• Website: a dedicated page or a box on each programme page — as close as possible to the purchase decision, with period and calculation base.
• Catalogues and programmes: the figures accompany the description of the services concerned.
• Quotations and tender responses: public buyers and structured companies ask for them explicitly.

The overarching golden rule: one rate = one period + one base. That is what separates evidence from a slogan, in an audit as in a sales meeting.

From published figures to an internal dashboard

Published rates are only the visible tip: to keep them accurate and effortlessly updatable, back them with a continuously maintained dashboard. A spreadsheet is enough, with one line per session: dates, headcount, planned and delivered hours, questionnaires sent and received, average score, candidates sat and passed. The annual rates derive automatically, with their calculation base — and the auditor asking “where does this 92% come from?” gets the answer in one column.

This dashboard serves beyond indicator 2: it materialises the attendance tracking required for dropout prevention, feeds the continuous-improvement loop (a dipping score triggers an analysis), and supplies the figures for the annual training activity and financial return (BPF). One data entry, four uses: the best administrative return in the whole quality system.

The mistakes that cost a finding on indicator 2

• Undated figures, or figures frozen for several years.
• An untraceable calculation base: the source survey has changed three times, the rate can no longer be reconstructed.
• A global rate hiding everything: 95% satisfaction “across all courses” while a flagship offering struggles — prefer rates per family of services.
• Invented or generously rounded figures: in an audit, a finding; in a commercial dispute, a misleading practice.
• No indicator published because “we’re just starting” — publish the measurement system and the first figures from the first cohort, as the new entrant route provides.

Take action

The Complete Qualiopi Kit (€297, 14-day guarantee) includes satisfaction questionnaires, rate-calculation templates and publication models compliant with indicator 2 — from collection to the figure displayed on your site. Building your organisation and its measurement system from the start? The ebook “Create your training organisation in 30 days” (€67) integrates these building blocks step by step — or choose the full pack (€347).