- What Are Your Company’s Goals For The Year? …
- What Needs To Change In Your Company To Meet These Goals? …
- What Skills Do Your Staff Need? …
- What Skills Do Your Staff Currently Have? …
- What Knowledge Gaps Exist Within Your Team?
Being able to conduct a training needs analysis is a key tool for any L&D professional. In this article, we will explain what a training needs analysis is, provide a template for conducting this analysis, and give a training needs analysis example. This guide will be useful for L&D professionals, trainers, and consultants alike.
Conducting an Employee Training Needs Analysis with Worksheet Template
What outcomes are expected from the training?
When you set up a training, plan ahead to decide the results you want to see. Professional development training should add value to the company and the work environment by increasing productivity, elevating performance or adding a new area of expertise to employee skills. You may want to make a list of measurable goals that can be tracked after the training.
Can an employee survey help to better understand training needs?
Sometimes its best to seek guidance from your employees to determine your training needs. Asking employees to select their own areas for growth shows you value their input. This method can also improve the outcome of training because employees may be more ready to adopt new practices if they have a choice in selecting the subject matter.
1 Is there a system to train new employees?
One ongoing training need is usually the onboarding of new employees. Once you figure out your initial training system, its important to continually assess the process after a predetermined period of time. You may also want to consider how you will educate new employees who missed an important training session. Digital training models can be a solution for access to previous development topics.
Ryan Moscoe Published Jun 21, 2021
There are a lot of articles out there explaining what a needs assessment is and how to complete one. Most of these articles offer a great theoretical foundation but are light on practical advice. For example, one article titled “How to Conduct an Effective Training Needs Analysis” outlines three steps: determine the desired outcome, determine the current outcome, and determine the cause of the performance gap and offer solutions. The article instructs the reader to obtain information from interviews, documents, observations, and reports.
What’s missing is a list of specific questions to ask and suggestions on how to use the answers to those questions. This article provides a few of the most critical questions to ask at each step in the needs analysis process.
An article from the Association for Talent Development (ATD) outlines the essential steps in conducting a needs analysis, such as collecting data and analyzing data. A needs analysis actually consists of at least three separate analyses: an organization or performance analysis, a learner or audience analysis, and a task or job analysis. Monica Savage defines these and other analyses and provides a handful of questions for each in an eLearning Industry article.
The organization analysis begins with an assessment of the current and desired states of performance and the gap between these states. It also includes a root cause analysis to determine whether training is an appropriate solution and what other solution(s) might be required to close the gap. The organization analysis should be completed before other analyses, because unless a performance gap is the result of a lack of knowledge or skill, the remaining analyses are not necessary; training cannot address the issue.
At a minimum, ask the following questions when completing an organization analysis:
To obtain the answers to these questions, interview clients and review performance reports. Once you have this information, conduct a root cause analysis to identify the underlying reason(s) for the performance gap. To identify root causes, you might conduct focus groups or interviews with subject matter experts or others who actually perform the work. You might also review existing documentation regarding processes and procedures, and you might conduct observations of high and average performers.
If a lack of knowledge or skill is the cause of the performance gap, or if something is changing, then training is an appropriate solution. In that case, a learner analysis and task analysis are needed.
When describing a learner analysis, many authors focus on who the learners are and what they already know. This information is important, but the learner analysis is about identifying the learners’ needs. Keep in mind that learners’ needs are not always the same as their wants—for example, the idea that we learn more effectively through our preferred sensory mode (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic) has been debunked. The key point here is that information about the target audience’s job titles and education levels is important, but it’s only a starting point. The learner analysis should also include the following questions:
The answers to these questions can help you determine the best delivery method(s) for the training and the maximum duration of a session. You can also use this information later, when scheduling classroom or virtual classroom sessions.
The learner analysis should also include these questions:
For answers to these questions, you might send surveys or questionnaires to members of the target audience. You might also use focus groups, and you might interview managers.
The task analysis identifies the task(s) to be trained and documents the steps involved in performing the task(s). This analysis serves as the basis for the development of training materials, elearning courses, and tests. Questions to ask include the following:
The answers to these questions help to prioritize the development and delivery of training for each task. The complexity and frequency for each task might also indicate whether job aids or other performance support tools are needed. In addition to these questions, the task analysis must answer two additional questions:
To obtain answers to these questions, review procedural documentation and conduct interviews and observations with subject matter experts or high performers. Once you have collected and analyzed the information from the organization, learner, and task analyses, share your findings with your manager and your client. It’s vital that these stakeholders are on the same page about the business problem to be solved and the methods of solving it before you design a training solution.
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What is a training needs analysis?
A training needs analysis (or TNA) always happens for a reason. Whether you are a learning and development (L&D) professional, trainer, or consultant, a TNA always serves a specific purpose.
The need for such analysis usually arises due to an organizational problem. This can be a lower than expected quarter for the sales team, changing technology threatening to impact the continuity of train operators, or constantly low customer satisfaction scores forcing the product team to work in a more agile and customer-focused way.
In all these instances, the problems can potentially be resolved through training. This is where the training needs analysis comes in. The training needs analysis is a process in which the gap between the actual and the desired knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) in a job are identified.
This is not to say that every problem can be solved through a training needs analysis – on the contrary! Most problems are caused by other organizational issues. Only when the problem is caused by a lack of knowledge, skills or attitudes, can a training and the required training needs analysis, be a viable solution.
This may mean that instead of a lack of knowledge, skills, or attitudes, our diagnosis may point out that sales are low because of a mismatch between the work and the rewards. Or that customer satisfaction is low because the top-down driven product strategy is not in line with what customers are looking for. These problems cannot be solved through training (alone) but require an organizational intervention.
Another example that I’ve run into, is an assertiveness training that a large county hospital was looking to purchase from a respected vendor. The problem was an increase in harassment incidents and an increase in medical errors, caused by the fact that nurses did not speak up. The organization was looking to train these nurses on assertiveness.
During the intake, the trainer realized that the organizational culture was highly hierarchical and that it was not unusual for people who did speak up to be fired or otherwise punished. The trainer refused to participate, explaining that the hospital first had to work on a culture where it was safe to speak up before training its staff to actually do so. Doing it the other way around could have devastating consequences for the nurses.
Training needs analysis best practices
Before providing you with a training needs analysis template, we will first go over three best practices that have impacted our recommendation for our training needs analysis template.
Up next, we will provide a training needs analysis template that integrates these.
FAQ
How do you Analyse the need for training?
- Step 1: Determine the Desired Business Outcomes. …
- Step 2: Link Desired Business Outcomes With Employee Behavior. …
- Step 3: Identify Trainable Competencies. …
- Step 4: Evaluate Competencies. …
- Step 5: Determine Performance Gaps. …
- Step 6: Prioritize Training Needs.
What are the three steps to conduct a training needs analysis?
- Step 1: Determine the Desired Outcome. The first step is to identify the desired performance standard or business outcome. …
- Step 2: Determine the Current Outcome. …
- Step 3: Determine the Cause of the Performance Gap, and Offer Solutions.
What are the basic elements of training needs analysis process?
