By Indeed Editorial Team Show
Updated February 22, 2021 | Published April 14, 2020 Updated February 22, 2021 Published April 14, 2020 The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed's data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey. As with any process, having a solid foundation can help ensure success. A training needs assessment lays the necessary groundwork for determining your organization's true need and how your employees will best receive the required training. In this article, we'll discuss what training needs assessment is, what its levels are and how you can do it. What is a training needs assessment?A training needs assessment (TNA) is an assessment process that companies and other organizations use to determine performance requirements and the knowledge, abilities and skills that their employees need to achieve the requirements. There are three key areas that are considered accurate assessors of those needs:
One of the outputs of the training needs assessment is a list of who needs what kind of training. For instance, your company may find that the IT department is failing to keep up with the industry standards and needs to undergo training that increases their knowledge about the latest technological innovations. Or maybe the IT interns are coming on full-time and require mentoring to become a competitive and productive part of the company. TNA aims to answer some familiar questions: why, who, how, what and when. Here's a look at the descriptions of the questions and what analysis can to answer them.
Related: What Are the Different Types of Workplace Training? Training needs assessment levelsThere are three levels of training needs assessment. These include the following: Organizational levelThe training needs assessment at the organizational level is a macro-level assessment that helps you determine areas where your employees lack the necessary skills or knowledge and provide need-based training. It aims to answer the following questions:
TNA at the organization level helps you clearly define measurable outcomes for training, allowing you to improve the chances of success of the training program. For instance, your insurance company's claims processing department constantly gets poor feedback from customers, so you want to improve its customer service rankings. An organizational-level assessment reveals the problems in claims processing and determines the need for training employees involved in claims processing. It can also explain why the training program is necessary and how it can help you achieve your goal of improving your company's customer service. Operational levelAt the operational level (also known as task or job level), TNA determines what kind of training do your employees need to achieve a specified level of proficiency. It involves task analysis, which determines the knowledge and skills required for specific tasks and correlates these requirements to the actual knowledge and skills of your employees. The gaps or problems revealed in this analysis can be used to determine the kind of training your employees need. TNA at the operational level aims to answer the following questions:
Some of the data sources that you can use to conduct TNA at the operational level include the following:
Individual levelAt the individual or personal level, the TNA determines how each employee performs his or her role. The difference between the actual performance and the expected performance helps you determine if there is really a need for TNA at the individual level. TNA at the individual level gives you a complete picture of your employees' performance and whether their performance meets expected standards. TNA at this level aims to answer the following questions:
How to conduct a training needs assessmentThere are four steps you should take to successfully conduct a training needs assessment. These steps include the following:
1. Determine desired outcomesDetermine where things are not working the way you need or want them to, and what success in those areas would look like. For instance, you may want to improve customer retention by about 5%, reduce support call time to under three minutes or increase new customer acquisition by 10%. To establish the metrics for success of your training program, you have to meet with your team leads, supervisors, managers, directors and other stakeholders. Once you have identified what your goals are, you can easily determine the behaviors that must be changed in order to reach those goals. Related: Setting Goals to Improve Your Career 2. Identify problems or specific points of painThe next step is to match your desired outcomes with the improvements in information, actions and abilities that support them. To do so, you have to break down duties and processes inherent to the outcomes so you can determine specific problems or points that need to be addressed. For instance, if you want to decrease the volume of calls your customer support receives, you need to examine what causes the volume of calls you are currently receiving. The problem may lie with the information customers receive about your product or services, with how calls are recorded and followed-up on, with the frequency and level of proactive communication between customer contacts and account managers or with a combination of all of those. There are a number of ways to identify areas that require improvement. Here are some of the most common and effective:
Related: How to Prepare for 9 Interview Types 3. Determine desired knowledge, skills and behaviorsOnce you have identified the specific problems you need to address, you can match training topics to the identified skill gaps. To do so, you should first come up with a list of knowledge, skills and competencies each trained employee needs to attain the established objectives. Then, you must have a way to determine if training has been successful at the individual level—the way to measure if the identified competencies and skills were achieved to the level required. These metrics for success are usually expressed as a series of learning goals tailored to each problem and the desired business outcome. Related: Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills 4. Set training timelines and prioritiesOnce you have determined the knowledge, skills or behaviors that your employees must develop to achieve established goals, it's now time to develop the full training agenda. To do so, you must first determine the targeted end date for the initiative, and then rank priorities for individual sessions and groups and put them on a schedule. You should determine priorities based on their urgency (how quickly you need to see results from employees) and sequence (training that must occur before other training can happen). Related: Requesting a Deadline Extension at Work: Steps and Examples 5. Choose training needs assessments and formatsNow that you know who your target participants are, what training is necessary, what your goals are and how quickly the training program needs to be complete, you can choose how you want to administer the training. Some good options include virtual or in-person instructor-led sessions, self-guided audio and video programs, computer-based simulations and online training. Your Learning and Development resource—consultancy or in-house—can help you choose the right course suitable for your company and project. |