Determining What Training is Needed

Learning Objectives

The training and development department can improve not only conditions and relationships in the current job positions, but also can help empower employees to choose and vie for better job positions by recognizing those career areas where their assets are a better fit for current and future needs.
Through employee perceptions, feedback, and observation, the needs analysis weighs the importance of various areas of your own organization in order to determine where you will want to allocate your scarce training resources.

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In addition to knowing and understanding the how employees fit into workplace and the gaps in their work knowledge, it is important for the training department to know where various employees are in their development, how their job performance measures up, and where they fit in within the organization culture. Some indicators of a organization’s culture are the manner in which decisions are made in the organization; the frequency, style and format of internal communication; and the pace and work ethic of the organization.

With this sort of information, the training and development department can improve not only conditions and relationships in the current job positions, but also can help empower employees to chose and vie for better job positions by recognizing those career areas where their assets are a better fit for current and future needs.

To establish what kinds of training you want to conduct within your organization, it is useful to carry out a training needs analysis.

This systematic analysis contrasts the "should" of employee performance with the "actual" results you are currently obtaining. Through employee perceptions, feedback, and observation, the needs analysis weighs the importance of various areas of your organization in order to determine where you will want to allocate your scarce training resources.

One such methodology is called a “fit/gap” analysis. The fit/gap analysis is one of the most empowering tools employees can be given to manage their own success. Such an analysis measures the difference between what skills and knowledge are needed to successfully perform on the job and the skills and knowledge that employees already possess. That way training is aimed only at what employees need in the way of training to function effectively on the job, not toward skills and knowledge they might already have.

Beyond having a good fit of behavior and skills for the job requirements, employees must be able to foster and maintain successful relationships with certain key people—the boss, critical team members, people for whom the employee is responsible, external and internal beneficiaries—on whom their job success is dependent.

In addition to knowing and understanding the fits and gaps in workplace relationships, it is important for an employee to evaluate how they fit in with the organization culture. Some of the indicators of a organization’s culture are the manner in which decisions are made in the organization; the frequency, style and format of internal communication; and the work pace and work ethic of the organization. It is effective exercise to have an employee describe their organization’s culture on paper, then compare it against a similar description of an environment in which they imagine themselves or have known themselves to perform well.

What is a Training Needs Analysis?

A training needs analysis is a process of gathering and interpreting data for identifying areas for personal and organizational performance improvement.

Training needs analyses help an organization strengthen its employees' job performance by pinpointing areas of performance that can be improved. A training needs analysis can also be used to determine the effectiveness of training once it has been conducted.

A survey or assessment is often conducted before any training takes place as well as after the training in order to determine the effectiveness of the training implemented.

It should be noted that the results of the training needs assessment may illustrate performance gaps or training issues based on the individual’s, group’s, or organization’s needs. In this way training can be targeted most effectively toward individuals who need it and toward areas of the organization where it is most needed.

For example, an individual may need a little help on learning how a new machine works. This individual can be taught by a more experienced machinist, if the organization has one, by a trainer who knows the machine, perhaps by the organization who makes it can be brought in for this training, or the trainee can be sent to training offsite.

Perhaps a group is not performing well due to poor communication and poor group interaction. The group may be taught team-building skills by a trainer/facilitator from the training department, by an outside vendor, or at an offsite location by a organization that specializes in team-building.

The organization could be embarking on a new strategy, such as Total Quality Management, where all employees need to be trained. Top management may be taught the overall principles, the training department may be taught the nuts and bolts, and the various departments may be taught some of the techniques, such as a Pareto analysis and how to use the fishbone diagram to illustrate bottlenecks in the process.

Why Conduct a Training Needs Analysis?

A training needs analysis can save your project/programme purpose valuable time and money, and help you to stay effective. We no longer hire an employee, show them what to do and they do it or else. The world of work has changed. The demand for higher quality and productivity, an emerging divergence from our ingrained work ethic, the need for remedial training of workers, and the elevated risk of litigation has magnified the need to carefully evaluate areas of weakness and strive to correct them through targeted, specific training.

The training needs analysis works to identify immediate needs, to inorganizational training into the long-range organization plans, to show your employees your commitment to training and development, and to win employee support for heightened productivity.
A training needs analysis may also discover a skills gap in the organization that the current workforce cannot close. It may be that the organization is taking a completely new focus due to increased competition in their current sector of activity or due to an opportunity in a new sector of activity. Management can conduct a training needs analysis and decide when the skills gaps are too broad to close in a time frame that makes effective sense. At that point they might either hire away the talent from competitors or buy the competitors outright.

One problem that organizations face when buying other organizations is deciding who to keep and who to let go. For similar organizations, if there are two employees with similar job functions, the acquiring organization’s employees are usually retained.

However, when larger organizations acquire smaller, more managerial organizations to get the management talent, an undesired phenomenon happens. Research has shown that within three years, 50% of the people the acquiring organization so desperately wanted, leave the organization, and within five years, the number jumps to as high as 80%. Most of these managers would rather be big fish in small ponds than small fish in big ponds.

When Would You Conduct a Training Needs Analysis?

A good time to conduct a training needs analysis is when the organization is contemplating investing significantly in taking training and development initiatives.

You may be contemplating organizational change, and believe that a training needs analysis will identify competence and behavior requirements. It may identify those who have multiple skills and those who are resistant to change.

You may be creating a succession plan and need a training needs analysis to identify competence, capability and potential. Many organizations have high potential programs where younger employees because of their education and performance are selected by the organization to be future executives of the organization.

You may be evaluating recent training and development or change initiatives and need a training needs analysis to assess the extent that your people have enhanced their and the organization's performance. It is very important that standards of performance be defined prior to the analysis. If the change initiative teaches assemblers a new way to install widgets, there should be an expectation that this will improve installations by a certain amount or percentage. The analysis can then find if performance expectations were realized.

You may be introducing new technology and need to assess the current skills of incumbent employees. Many employees are being asked to learn all sorts of new computer skills because many organizations are rolling out Knowledge Management initiatives (see Module 13 for more on Knowledge Management). This may require employee to use a Learning Management System (LMS) for web-based training. Although most LMS methods can track who took on-line classes, they cannot tell how effective the learning was. That’s why you need a training needs analysis.

Who Conducts the Training Needs Analysis?

Training Needs Analyses can be conducted by:

a) Internal Analysis Teams

These are usually headed by the organization’s Human Resources Department. The team or teams are responsible for designing and conducting the analysis and evaluating the results.

A team may comprise senior managers, department heads and supervisors. All team participants must be thoroughly trained in methods used to gather and assess the information.

An internal team is beneficial because it has a good grasp on what kinds of training is required. It also should have a better perspective of the future needs of the organization as stated by its mission project/programme purpose plan.

On the other negative side, the internal team may be seen as having hidden agendas, so some employees may not be honest with the team, fearing negative employment repercussions.

b) External Analysis Team

There are benefits in using an outside organization to conduct your training needs analysis. Designing and carrying out training needs analyses can be time-consuming. Members of the outside team have the expertise to the conduct the analysis quickly and effectively and are not distracted by other priorities.

Also, employees may believe an external team has no hidden agenda, so the employee can be very honest with them.

Yet, an external team often doesn’t understand the culture or direction of the organization and is deemed less legitimate than an internal team.

Specific Training Needs Analysis

You may find that an analysis is needed to identify specific needs or you may only want to analyze a particular department.

Before designing the training, worksite hazards and possible work and training related problems must be analyzed. Results of these analyses underscore the special needs of your training, which in turn will determine your training objectives and contents.

Needs Analysis

Six general areas of needs analysis are applicable to a wide range of situations as shown in the following example from the Stanford School of Medicine safety training for laboratory staff at the school’s research and clinical laboratories:

1) Job assignments and hazards: What different duties/tasks are performed in the lab by employees? Which of these involve hazards and will need special training?

2) Trainee background: What is the educational, technical and experience level of the trainees? Could language be a factor in communication and training?

3) Work environment: Aside from the intrinsic hazards of the job, are there extrinsic or environmental risks, which will need to be addressed in the training?

4) Training conditions Has occupational health and safety training been received by the trainees before? Are the trainees sensitized and receptive to the training?

5) Informational and training aids: What materials, printed or otherwise, will be of value in job training and in job performance?

6) Training needs: Why is the training necessary, or what is it aimed to accomplish?”

These general areas can generate specific question relevant to your own organization.

7. Methods Used for Conducting Training Needs Analysis

Methods for gathering data for a training needs analysis may include the following: paper-based assessments, electronic questionnaires (via e-mail or using Intranet / Internet forms), and / or interviews (telephone, face-to-face, one-to-one, or group, and video conferencing).

Paper-based assessments are used by all sorts of organizations to get feedback from their constituents. How many surveys have you received in the mail recently? Many appliances have small surveys (a type of paper-based questionnaire) that come in its package. By examining the responses, the manufacturers not only decide what new features or products to introduce, but they get a better idea of who is buying the product. This can assist their beneficiary service department in its selection and training process.

Other paper-based assessment tools include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Firo-B test, and many others that assess managerial style, perceived locus of control (do you control your destiny or are you a victim of fate), and a host of other attitudes and values. Other tests are more targeted to see if you know the correct specifications, implications of laws like discrimination and sexual harassment, and other job specific information.

On-line surveys are becoming more popular, but aren’t replied to as often for a couple of reasons. Unless the individual knows who it’s from and deems it important, it will usually go unanswered though if the survey is on the organization Intranet, this is not usually a problem. Also, there’s a distrust of many surveys over the Internet. People fear that the information will lead to more unwanted e-mail.

Face-to-face interviews are time-consuming, but they reveal the most information. The main obstacle is the credibility of the interviewer. If the interviewer is a professional, the interviewee will be more at ease. If there are multiple interviewees, sometimes group pressure inhibits individual openness, making it difficult to get to the root of training issues.

Results of the Analysis

The results of any analysis will assist in determining training objectives and the content of training programs. A careful identification of needs therefore, is critical to designing the training plan.

If a needs assessment and resultant training is perceived as unfair, or simply has not accomplished what it set out to do, lawsuits may be filed by disgruntled employees. An example of this happened recently.

A technical support group of a division of a transportation organization consisted of four women. Two were Caucasian, one was Asian, and one was African-American. The two Caucasians and the Asian woman were sent to Microsoft Certified Engineering training, which was very expensive, but the African-American woman was not. Management did not believe her performance warranted the additional training.

The woman eventually left the organization; but sued them for racial discrimination. Her evidence was that the others had been offered and allowed to attend this training that was important to her continued employment. The organization settled out of court.

A training needs analysis can also help you identify where training won't help. More training isn't always the right answer to every challenge faced by you or your employees. You can identify improvements that may not require training to correct. Perhaps all that people require is information, feedback, or coaching, and so forth, not training.

It should be noted that if the training department keeps hearing about people in the same department needing coaching or feedback, it could be that the manager of the department needs some training. Don’t be too quick to judge where the problem lies, but don’t always believe someone just because they’re a manager either. Managers are people, too, and they can make mistakes, some of which can be expensive and may need a training solution.

Communicating the Results of the Analysis

In conducting a training needs analysis, you will have raised the expectations of employees and it is essential that the results be conveyed to them to ensure their continued participation in the training and development programs that may follow.

Results can be communicated by written reports, organization-wide or departmental meetings, or an organization’s Intranet, or in personal feedback sessions with individuals. What is most important is that the results, both the positive and the negative, are shared with all employees. If all the employees hear is that things are wonderful, they will likely distrust the results. It is better for the management to acknowledge negative findings. This often gains the trust of employees.
A major American defense organization was having problems meeting an aggressive schedule for a tank. It was decided that one of the main issues was that managers were not working together effectively, so a consulting team was brought in from organizational headquarters.

Training was developed that included managerial and learning styles, team-building, communication weaknesses, and other related issues. A three-day, offsite retreat was followed up with by a two-day off-site retreat, in which the mission, goals, and objectives for the division were painstakingly hammered out by all 78 managers of the division.

The managers were so proud of themselves they almost broke their arms patting themselves on the back. They felt that they now had a handle on how to fix the problems in the division.

Only they failed to see one of the biggest problems—the lack of communication between the managers and the employees. After six weeks, one of the consultants asked a director if he had held a meeting with his employees to discuss the mission, goals, and objectives. The director stated that the mission, goals, and objectives were just for the managers. Two years later, the Army canceled the $4 billion, 20-year contract.

Turning the Analysis into Action

The training needs analysis process identifies a skills gap resulting in the establishment of: 1) organization training and development policies and objectives; 2) departmental training and development policies and objectives; and 3) personal development priorities and a personal development planner.

The following excerpts from, Achieving Harmony and High Performance in the Workplace, by Dinah Daniels provides an overview of the importance of the training needs analysis:

“The key to creating a type of stable, productive workplace is to put employees in charge of their own success. Employees who are empowered to manage their own growth and achievement on the job tend to be more self-satisfied, more cooperative, and more pro-active in trouble-shooting and solving problems. Ultimately, they are more invested in contributing to the organization’s efficiency and bottom line because they know they have the power to affect change within the organization and to promote and control their own career growth.

Next comes an even more essential awareness: how their personal and professional assets match with the requirements of their particular job; a valuable process we call “fit/gap analysis. Many employees often lack a clear sense of how their personal behavioral style may be short-circuiting their job effectiveness or impacting important working relationships. With some fit/gap analysis training, a manager with an annoying or accusatory communication style can modify his or her style to foster a more positive relationship and consequently promote better efficiency and productivity from the entire team.

Likewise, managers who are fully cognizant of their workers fits and gaps can be more effective in hiring and placing employees where they will be most productive and successful. In other words, with this new awareness, they become better, more effective managers.”

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