How to Perform a Training Needs Assessment (Free Templates)

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Training needs assessment helps identify an employee’s current level of skill, competency, or knowledge in one or more areas and compares that level to the required standards established for their positions within the organization. The difference between the required and the current competencies can help determine the training needs. This is important because it eliminates the need to train all the employees when some are doing well. Training needs assessment helps the management make informed decisions.

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What is a Training Needs Assessment?

A solid foundation is an essential ingredient for success. This is the primary role of a Training Needs Assessment (TNA). It plays a crucial role by laying the groundwork for determining a company’s essential needs and the best way through which its employees will receive the necessary training.

A Training Needs Assessment, commonly referred to as TNA, is an assessment process that companies and other institutions use to determine abilities, skills, performance requirements, and knowledge that their employees need to achieve the set goals.

Levels of Training Needs Assessment

Discussed below are the different levels of training needs assessment:

Organizational Analysis

This evaluation aims to shortlist the focus areas for training within the organization and the factors that might affect it. Corporate vision, mission, goals, processes, and performance are all studied. The assessment gives a hint about the kind of learning environment needed for training. It is recommended to do organizational surveys once a year, keeping in view the organization’s long-term and short-term goals.

 Job Analysis

This assessment aims at understanding the state of the training development stage. It seeks to determine what kind of intervention is required in a job analysis. In this assessment, the job description wherein both the task-oriented and worker-oriented approaches is considered. For a start, the worker approach identifies key behaviors and focus on a specific task and job. On the other hand, the task-oriented approach recognizes the activities to be performed in a particular position. This approach is mostly used in program evaluation and content development.

 Individual Analysis

Individual assessment is focused on who in the organization needs the training and in which specific area. In this state, the performance is compared with what is expected or the standard level of performance. In most cases, individual analysis is conducted through 360 feedback, questionnaires, personal interviews, etc. Similarly, a majority of organizations use competency ratings to rate their employees. These settings come from customers, peers, subordinates, bosses, etc.

Reasons to Perform a TNA

Why should you perform a training needs assessment? Mentioned below are the reasons TNA is essential:

  • It helps you prioritize training needs with the highest business impact.
  • It makes transitions easy. In cases of organizational change, the process will be made easy by TNA.
  • It enables you to train the right employees with the right skills. Instead of generalizing, you will focus on a few that need the training.
  • It is the best way to engage your staff in constant learning and coaching. This is easy to train and engage your employees.
  • TNA helps you identify methods and tools you never gave a chance to before. This is an easy way to find potential solutions.
  • Gives you a greater Return on Investment. By training your employees, their efficiency will increase significantly hence improved productivity.
  • It helps you plan your training for the year.
  • It is an ideal method for identifying knowledge gaps before they become problematic.
  • It ensures that your training is more targeted and effective.
  • It gives you an idea of areas to focus on.
  • TNA helps you prioritize your needs.
  • Best way to sort out who should attend which training sessions.
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How to Perform a Training Needs Analysis

Discussed below are ways you can perform a training needs assessment.

Determine the Desired Business Outcomes: 

The first thing you need to do is identify your training’s goal. Is it to improve innovation? Reduce costs? Or is it to improve production? It is essential to pinpoint the areas that need improvement to avoid wayward training. This is important because it saves money and improves efficiency.

Identify Trainable Competencies:

After identifying areas that need improvement, find ways that they will do so. You need to figure out the skills and knowledge your employees require to improve production.

Evaluate Competencies:

The next step is eliminating any barriers that would prevent employees from developing and learning their knowledge and skills. Such barriers can be a lack of management support or inferior training delivery methods.

Prioritize Training Needs:

After gathering all the necessary information from the last three steps, it is time to deliver practical training. This will be more targeted because you will have already identified areas of weakness.

Training Needs Assessment Templates

A training needs assessment is essential to any organization. Please get started by downloading our easy-to-use training needs assessment templates!

Client-Need-Analysis

IC---Data-Analysis-Template

Market-Need-Analysis-Template

Organizational-Analysis-Template

Staff-Training-Plan

Swot-Analysis-Template

Technology-Need-Analysis-Template

Training-Gap-Analysis-Template

Training-Needs-Assessment

Training-Need-Analysis

Health-Care-Needs-Assessment

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