ow to be sure that your training hit the mark? By providing relevant and effective programs. For it, you should deliver the ones that answer training needs and close gaps. And all of this is impossible without a training needs assessment/analysis (TNA).
TNA is an approach that L&D specialists use to gather data and make informed decisions. Wonder how to navigate this tedious process?
Read on to learn more about assessing employee needs, key steps to follow, and tips to avoid potential pitfalls.
Do You Need a Training Needs Analysis?
Before all, you require a training needs analysis when your company faces performance challenges, technological changes, or new regulations. Let’s say it’s a compass for your training strategy. Assessing training needs ensures that training will be the right solution to the performance issue or skill gap.
In particular, training needs analysis is a process to identify whether an employee lacks knowledge, skills, or abilities to perform a job.
Usually, it helps to underline what kind of training an employee or a team of employees requires. Let’s consider an example:
Imagine a sales team consistently missing a prospect or a lead. What may be an issue? Lack of persuasion or negotiation techniques, or lack of product knowledge.
You must be sure it's a job for a product team and their product training, right? Yet, it’s not always the case. Beware, training needs assessment may show that training is not the answer.
Note: training needs assessment turns into an instrument that stops you from guessing and confirms whether it’s a matter of competencies.
There, the evaluation depends on such categories as knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). They are crucial components for employee qualification and competency. Let’s look at KSA's components in greater detail:
Three Levels of Training Needs Assessment
Nevertheless, knowing that there is a gap is not enough. In terms of HR and L&D strategy, it’s important to get a complete picture of possible interventions. That’s why L&D specialists examine needs on three different levels. What are they?
Highlight. These levels ensure that you simultaneously have in mind big-picture goals, cover the operational level, and answer the individual aspirations of employees. They allow the creation of a cohesive training strategy.
How to Conduct a Training Needs Analysis/Assessment?
Looks like we’ve talked enough about the justification of assessing training needs. Now, let’s switch to how you can perform an analysis with our step-by-step guide.
How does it work? Each step adds to the previous one, so that you start from broad goals and in the end have an actual training plan that can be implemented.
Step 1: Define organizational goals
Let’s start with the highest level, the organizational one. In other words, start with the end in mind – the ultimate goal that the organization wants to achieve.
Usually, it aims to answer a recent pain point of the company. It may refer to losing an edge or competitive advantage, the desire to develop an organizational capability, or the opportunity linked to new markets.
Other than that, in many cases, they will depend on the following measurements: financial indicators, profit, return on investment, return on capital employed, and earnings growth.
Yet, don’t forget that training remains the key that will help the company achieve its goals.
In particular, if the goal is to decrease the time of development by 15%, the relevant solution might indeed be training developers on more advanced techniques.
If you want to enhance leadership among management, the solution will refer to soft skills training for team leads.
As a result, defining organizational goals within the assessment of training needs also means clarifying the problem and confirming that building skills/knowledge is part of the solution.
Step 2: Determine job behaviors and core competencies
Once you have goals that are clear, specific, and relevant, you should switch to what people need to do to achieve the objectives.
The next step is to determine critical job behaviors that constitute core competencies of employees and would give your company an advantage. It is concerned with the operational level of training needs assessment.
You should ask the following question:
What are the specific actions or behaviors employees must demonstrate for us to reach this outcome?
For example, let’s say you have the following organizational goal: improvement of customer satisfaction.
The relevant job behaviors might include persuasive communication, empathy, and adaptability.
For instance, the Future Jobs Report, based on the poll among workforce, underlines the following skills as the most important skills for the future: analytical skills (69%); resilience, flexibility, and agility (67%); leadership and social influence (61%).
However, you should focus on practical behavior, not abstract qualities, for an employee to be satisfied.
It will allow you to map out what good performance looks like. Have a look at examples of behaviors of different roles that are relevant to organizational roles:
Highlight. At the end of this step, you should target competencies or behavior by focusing on tasks. It will allow you to link board goals to day-to-day actions.
Step 3: Match employee behaviors with required skills
What’s the next step to follow when doing a training needs assessment? It relates to breaking down behaviors into specific skills, knowledge, or even abilities that the goal requires them to develop.
Within this step, you transform a behavior or task (what a person needs to do) into the skill (what should be known to adequately perform). Importantly, that’s where you identify gaps.
For it to work, you need to create a competency model or a checklist that answers certain roles’ behavior. Let’s return to our training needs assessment example. For Customer Support Agents and Product Managers, there will be certain skills that will help them perform their tasks.
That way, you combine behavior into groups and determine the scope of skills and knowledge necessary to achieve a certain goal.
What’s next? First, consult with managers on whether you got the tasks correctly. Secondly, define the proficiency level for the desired skill or knowledge. It’s all necessary for you to compare the skills you need vs the skills your people currently have. The difference is the skill gap, a training need you will need to address.
Step 4: Collect data on current performance and skills
Once you have a list of required competencies and skills, it’s high time you identify the current abilities of employees. For training needs assessment, it’s one of the most crucial stages.
What are the key methods? The ones that will allow you to gather evidence. They consist of surveys, skill audits, assessments, and tests.
Don’t ignore the existing data. Performance review, reports, and feedback from customers are other sources of information. They can all point you where the team struggles.
Note. If you have already done some training within the LMS, the scoreboard, completion scores, or feedback are the tools that can help you with skill gap analysis.
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In the end, your goal is to get a clear picture of the current state, so don't hesitate to resort to different methods, not just one.
Step 5: Analyze the gaps and develop a training plan
Upon your analysis, you can prioritize the gaps that would have the biggest impact on the organizational goals or the most urgent ones. Sure, you can find several skills that you can address at once. Yet, you should focus on the critical ones. Usually, they refer to safety and compliance.
Interesting fact. L&D opportunities that are given for career progressions satisfy less than 30% of employees.
Simultaneously, you are likely to know that not all employees need training. That’s where you can identify activities or actions that can compensate for the gap, for instance, an updated competency in performance review, the inclusion of a new technology, or sharing job aids.
Once you know what skills you need, it’s time to create a training plan or training program. There, you should identify the key objective, develop a structure and content, create an evaluation plan, and determine resources to use.
Note. Effective programs depend on the curriculum, which you can see as a structured and strategic approach to developing training, offering vision with available resources, content, and goals in mind.
Step 6: Weigh in on the training solutions
Upon the analysis of gaps, think of preferences that your employees have in terms of training. They may refer to accessibility, schedule, and interests. Based on them and the organization's goals, consider the training delivery strategies you may adopt to support them.
The period of needs and gaps analysis is the ideal time for you to think of delivery methods, as there you have a full picture and can take into account organizational AND individual needs.
At this stage, you should decide what you want to focus on:
- Continuous programs, microlearning, or self-paced courses.
- Collaborative or self-paced learning.
- Ready-made courses or subscriptions to cover specific topics.
- Workshops and lectures with invited experts.
- Conferences or intensive bootcamps for a specific audience.
- Advanced modules within the company.
In this regard, you should keep in mind the budget and resources of your team, the urgency of needs, and the capabilities of the external team.
For example, the internal team needs to focus on compliance and product training; in that regard, you may want to invite an expert for other types of training to satisfy individual needs.
Another option is a partnership with a business school or a corporate subscription, whereas the first may be effective but pricey, while the second is cost-effective, yet the success would depend on the employees and their willingness to complete a program.
Step 7: Communicate effectively and gather feedback
Once you complete a training needs assessment, you should communicate the plan for the subsequent training. It will work only if you notify all the stakeholders and show that the company values the employee’s development.
Interesting fact. Almost 50% of employees who left the company voluntarily underline that the manager did not discuss their future within the organization, job satisfaction, or performance.
You should let employees know the key information and explain the following:
- Why does the training take place?
- What should it include?
- How will it benefit them?
Note. You should also communicate how you will handle the training needs assessment. Doing so will improve your chances of getting honest answers and get employees more engaged.
When communicating, use multiple channels, from a team meeting to emails and 1-1’s. Moreover, you can invite executives and managers to the process and news sharing.
What about the feedback? Collecting feedback and monitoring results may refer to training evaluation. Yet, we’d recommend looking at it as part of the continuous training needs analysis cycle.
There, it’s important to treat feedback constructively. Your employees may find a course too theoretical, indicating a need for more practical exercises next time. Or perhaps you discover that despite training, an external blocker (like an outdated tool) is still hindering performance.
All the feedback is a signal for you to reevaluate the need and provide a different solution. You may want to decide to add follow-up refresher sessions, or ongoing coaching might be needed to reinforce learning.
Other Important Training Needs Assessment Tips
As you now know, training needs assessment is not a one-and-done; it’s a cycle. The feedback and performance data after training can feed into the next round of assessments. And during the entire cycle, an array of diverse factors can affect your judgment, from internal to external. In this regard, we’ve prepared three important tips to help you be ready.
To ensure that the training needs assessment, and the training that follows are on point:
Tip#1. Know your audience
As TNA contemplates analysis and communication, it’s important to always keep your employees in mind. In this regard, you should understand demographics, roles, and training preferences. This information affects how you collect information.
In particular, around 50% of employees believe that surveys do not work and won’t reflect the reality (ZestmeUp).
Does it mean it may affect their participation and engagement? Sure.
That’s why you may think of performance reviews and manager feedback to support surveys with different data.
Other than that, knowing your audience, from cultural to generational factors, can help you predict their preferences and needs.
For instance, subject to Adecco, Millennials value stability, while Gen Z would look for a dream job. In terms of TNA, it can give you a hint on how to approach analysis and what to focus on in surveys or polls, or how to handle personalization.
Tip#2. Consider external factors:
Leave room for the fact that the need for training may be driven by external changes. They refer to new regulations, market shifts, and technological developments. If the source of a gap is external, you may want to consider non-training solutions. Like what? Process improvement or better tools. They may affect the performance.
The main question in this regard that you should remember “Is there anything outside the individual that’s causing the performance gap? Can training programs help?”
Tip#3. Consider that training may not be a solution
Also, sometimes training needs assessment shows that training won’t fix the issue.
You might find, for example, that a dip in product quality isn’t due to workers’ lack of skill but rather a machine malfunction. Issues within the customer service operation may result from confusing guidelines or policies. So, identify the root of the issue, and evaluate whether training will be a solution.
But what if you have doubts? What will justify training? Legal and safety risks. It may be a good reason to go for training.
Summing up
Training needs assessment is not the flashiest part of L&D work, yet it’s a very important one. Creating a system that handles the identification of needs allows you to set your organization up for success.
There, try to develop an approach that is not just data-driven but also human-centric. You can take performance metrics and survey scores as a basis, but also leave room for intuition about your team’s motivations.
Ready for the next step? Read our articles on training curriculum development and training program creation.
