Role of needs assessment in training and support

Every organization has their set of objectives and goals and to achieve alongside their strategic plans. Every department and employees within the organization are part of this plan in order to work towards the collective goals. Every organization has desired expectation of work performance from the employees, if an employee is unable to perform as per standard level of expected performance that indicates the implementation of training needs. So, in order to indentify the gaps in between the present performance and expected performance as per the organizational objectives, training needs assessment is needed. This is a tool to determine the lacking areas of employee and to overcome this what training needs to be developed to enhance the performance of the employees and to accomplish the goals and objectives of the organization.

Now this can be done in various ways depending on the number of individuals or a group size. If it has to be for individual, better results can be expected by arranging one on one discussion or conversation, formal group meeting or survey would be better approach for a bigger group or a greater number of people. So, we can conclude formal process can be used to identify training needs whereas to understand the support needs of the employees, can execute in a much informal way. Once the training needs are identified, then to determine or develop effective training and support objectives which have to be accomplished by the training.

Areas needed to identify

In this competitive market every employee is expected to be good decision maker, action oriented, productive, innovative, adaptable, independent thinker. These can be expected if an employee has required knowledge, skills and abilities to perform that particular job role. What knowledge, skills and abilities are required for that position or individual, need to be indentified to understand the gap that lies in between present performance and expected level of performance. This can be done by talking to people who are already holding that position.

Asking people about their experiences, working in the same role and how much their knowledge, skills and abilities have helped them in performing their job successfully or whether they had faced any challenges would be equally important in analyzing gap. This activity also reveals about their confidence level and how important they feel they are within the organization.

There should be an approach to directly ask people to evaluate areas where they would like to work on and enhance their skills and knowledge to the next level to perform their task much more efficiently and effectively, this would definitely increase their confidence and make them work innovatively.

Also, it would be helpful if we can understand our target audience and their learning style to get better training outcomes. There are different forms of training like in-house training, attending external courses, e-learning, books, or shadowing as a method of learning. This need to be identified as per the target audience preference that which training form would be applicable for the potential trainees. A successful training needs analysis will identify those who need training and what kind of training is needed and in what format it needs to be delivered. Proper execution of this plan requires an involvement of the company’s head with training managers, budget holders and expected trainees to conduct discussion and move ahead with the plan which gives a clearance about the training priority. It can be based on :

Urgency of need
Number of participants attending the training
Resources and sources available for training in the organization

Right time to do needs assessment

Training & development is a vital part of any industry or organization as training upgrades the existing skills of employees to the next level so that they can reach the desired performance expected by the organization. Also, training would be helpful for new employees in the organization to get accustomed with organizational culture which generally happens in a form of introduction or induction event. But it would be recommended to conduct training needs assessment once people join their roles in the organization, understand their job and experience it, that would be the right time to analyze the need gap. You also need to be very careful before pitching about any training openly as they get to know that they are lacking somewhere which can be improved through training and this might sometimes hurt their feelings. So, understanding of available resources, funding, infrastructure everything needs to be considered before training needs assessment.