It was one Saturday morning when I received an inquiry about training programs that I could conduct for managers and employees. It would be easy for me to just give the person a list of what I can run, but instead, I asked if they had specific training needs identified. Unfortunately, they don't have. They are asking because an audit is coming very soon and they need to send their employees to training for compliance purposes.
This is a sad story for an HR practitioner like me. Just sending our employees to public training is not so practical and would be a waste of money. The person who attends training that is not aligned with their interests and developmental needs will take the training for granted.
Training needs may be identified through job evaluation, performance evaluation, or specifically through the conduct of a training needs assessment (TNA). TNA is a process where you identify competency gaps and the career development interests of the employees. If done properly, it will help the organization save costs and improve the efficiency of the employees. It is the very first step to take before designing a training program.
How does training need analysis help the organization?
Strategically speaking, a TNA provides you with a view of probable causes for employees' inefficiency in the performance of their functions. Compare the job expectations to the current skills of the employees, and you will be able to see the skill gaps. By addressing the gaps, you may be able to design a program for how the employee would be able to meet the company's expectations. You may send them to a training program specific to the gaps, or you may find a resource person to mentor and coach them. If there are common skill gaps among your employees, then it will be less costly to find a resource person to conduct the training, than to send them individually to public program offerings.
Another point, training may not always be the answer to identified gaps. The gaps or inefficiency of personnel may be due to misaligned expectations of the employees' performances or maybe a lack of interest in the position they applied for. If this is the case, we recommend that HR interview the employees to determine their interests, career goals, and commitment to staying with the organization.
TNA should also be able to give you a view of how much developmental programming is needed to design and budget your training programs. If there's a wide variety of training needs, it shows that we need to improve our recruitment process. Through recruitment, we make sure that we find the right person for the job openings. However, if the job vacancies are not well defined, it will be very difficult to select candidates that best fit the organization.
In the next article, I will share with you how to conduct a training need analysis. Follow us to receive announcements when new articles are published.
