Assessment of Training Needs

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.

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:

• Skill proficiency of employees
• Employees’ frequency of skill usage
• Level of employees’ skills crucial to job performance

Reasons

• Why conduct the training: Organizations typically conducts training to tie the performance problem to a working need and make sure that the benefits of carrying out the training are greater than the problems. To answer this question, you have to conduct two types of analysis: feasibility analysis and needs versus wants analysis.
• Who is involved in the training: A training typically involves appropriate parties to solve the performance problem. To determine the target participants for the training, you have to conduct a target population analysis. This type of analysis allows you to learn as much as possible about the people who are involved in the deficiency and how to tailor a training program to engage them.
• How to fix the performance problem: Conducting training can help fix the performance problem. But you have to look for another remediation if training is not appropriate. To identify what skill deficiency to address, you must conduct a performance analysis. This type of analysis investigates how your company or department is performing as a whole.
• What is the best way to perform: There is a preferred or better way to do a task to get the best results. To identify the best way to perform, you must conduct a task analysis. This type of analysis gets down to the fine details of exactly what your employees are doing in their individual roles.
• When to conduct the training: Because holidays, work cycles, etc. affect the participants’ attendance at the training, you must determine the best timing to deliver training. You may conduct a context analysis to answer logistics questions. Context analysis is a method to examine the environment in which a business operates.