What Is A Training Needs Analysis?
I always like to turn to wikipedia for a definition.
Wiki states that:
Training Needs Analysis (TNA) is the process of identifying the gap between employee training and the needs of training.
In short, it’s knowing what skills, knowledge, and behaviours to improve through training and development which in turn will result in improved performance.
That’s the bottom line!
It’s all about performance improvement.
So why bother with a TNA? Here are 6 benefits of conducting a training needs assessment of some kind.
TNA Benefits
1. TNAs enable you to identify knowledge and technical skills gaps before they become a problem
One major benefit of completing a training needs assessment is it can help you and the employee to identify any knowledge and skills gaps before they become an issue and have a negative impact on the business and or the individual. Highlighting the potential problem and finding a solution is far better than having to deal with an issue because of the gap. The training needs analysis will allow you to take a proactive approach rather than waiting for something to go wrong before you realise there is a problem.
2. They help you to plan your training for the year
On completion of the TNA, you will be able to plan your Leadership Development Programme or other learning and development events, allowing you to align training to working practices, patterns of high business activity and importantly prepare a budget for your training over the course of the year.
3. Highlights training you may not have considered
It is often difficult to formulate a plan for training within a large organisation without completing some sort of background research first. You may think that you know the type of training your team should be completing, but a TNA could highlight areas that your team needs training on that you never even considered before.
Without the use of a TNA, you may never have considered a particular area of training, which could have severely hindered your business.
4. Enables training to be focussed on the right areas
Completing a TNA will allow you to see exactly what you need to focus on, but it will also highlight the areas your team really do not need any further training on for the moment.
Key point – if there are no apparent gaps in knowledge or skills in a particular area, then running further training on it could be a waste of time and money!
5. Helps to determine who should attend training
Determining who should attend training is an important step in planning training – the key is to ensure the right people are in the right training sessions. There is no point in making everyone in your organisation attend every training session you run. To be honest this is a complete waste of energy, time, and money for the business. This approach also leads to disengagement and demotivated staff – staff will not be engaged with training sessions if they are frequently attending training which is of no use to them.
6. Helps you to prioritise training needs
Most organisations find it difficult to plan training – it is hard to determine which training is the most important. By using a TNA, you will be able to target the training which needs to be completed ASAP, and which training can be left till later in the year.
Conducting A Training Needs Assessment
So where do you start?
In an ideal world your organisation would carry out an organisational needs assessment first (ONA) – this covers exactly what your organisation needs to develop, to grow and improve.
It’s a big gap analysis up top!
This then filters down to department needs and then finally to an individual training needs assessment.
In a lot of situations L&D, HR and Managers alike just want to know what their staff need to do their role more effectively! Hence it can be a tactical activity as well as a strategic one.
Organisational Support
This is all about lining up your ducks and getting your key stakeholders on-board to first, agree that a TNA needs to be done and secondly, how it will be done.
I’ve seen this often happen with a trigger event which means that someone or a group in authority recognises that the Actual Organisational Performance (AOP) is than the Expected Organisational Performance (EOP)
Triggering Event = AOP
It’s normally got to come from on high if you are going to start with an organisational needs analysis. But if you’re looking for a department, team or individual training needs analysis, then it can be completed without an ONA, but it will be more tactical and based on the needs of your people rather than coupling the skills they need now and, in the future, so that your organisation meets its own needs and targets.
Organisational Analysis
This is about setting the goals and the objectives for the TNA and as mentioned this will start with an organisation needs analysis.
So, think about what you want to achieve as an organisation, if the training climate is right and identify any external and legal constraints that might get in the way of what you want to achieve.
Requirements Analysis
Here, you’re looking at the various jobs and roles that you have and how you will measure the capability of the people who are carrying out these duties. We have some options on how this can be conducted in the next section.
You’ll also be looking at the people who will be involved in the TNA, whether it’s a whole department, the entire workforce or if you’re doing it role by role.
Apart from measuring your missions, values and behaviours, each role will be different so will require a different set of criteria on which to base the analysis on.
Job Analysis
This is where the rubber meets the road! For each role the following will need to be determined:
- Tasks in the role
- Knowledge required
- Skills required
- Abilities required
You’ll then be able to develop task and KSA clusters.
Person Analysis
This is where the gaps in knowledge, skills and ability are identified and then a plan of action is put in place to improve them.
This normally happens with some goals and key performance indicators being created and then a development plan produced off the back of it.
It doesn’t always mean that training is the answer. Possible other solutions could include coaching, mentoring, online learning, action learning sets or reading a book! There are hundreds of possible solutions to plug the gaps.
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