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Introduction to Instructional Design: Needs Assessment (Remastered)

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How to Conduct a Needs Assessment

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ATD Article

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Use Personas to Design Learner-Centric Experiences

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Use personas to design personalized, learner-centric experiences.

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ATD Article

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I recently found myself faced with a request from a customer to develop a training course for a topic that was already covered by several courses in our learning management system.

Enter needs analysis

Out came the toolbox, the red flags, and a desire to help the customer identify the root cause for why staff were not following through on a task that was critical to the success of the department.

A needs analysis can range from an interview with the customer to a time-consuming data collection of past trainings and events, an analysis of the status quo, and an idea of what the desired end result should be. In this case, the needs analysis concentrated on interviewing the customer and other personnel in the same position as the customer, but operating in other facilities.

We quickly came to a consensus that enough training had already been provided. The other conclusion from the needs analysis was that we needed to initiate and develop a performance improvement plan.

Exit the training department?

Some questioned whether the training team should step back at this point. After all, we determined that that training was not the solution that fit the customers' needs. But, of course, we decided to stay involve.

Indeed, remember that tool box? It was the perfect time to use all those other skills a training department brings to the table.

If you are working in a full-service, solution-oriented organization, this is exactly the type of customer you want to keep. Use your skills and turn this no-training problem into a win-win solution for the customer, the staff, and your organization.

Listening to the customer/s and guiding them through a root cause analysis may net you a range of information similar to what I discovered in working with my customers, which happened to be a collective group of co-managers.

The concerns had not been discussed in any detail at any department meeting. As a result, the employees were not aware of the level of importance with the actual task or that a problem even existed.

The customers had at their disposal data that showed progress where staff were meeting or missing specific performance targets. That data was not shared in department meetings.

The customers assumed that Read and Sign policies were read and understood.

The customers believed that any employee completing the requisite training remembered the entirety of each training course and could carry the tasks out accordingly.

The customers did not celebrate goals met. Nor did the customers discuss errant employees with human resources for suggestions on how to take corrective action.

Welcome a better solution

So, if not training, then what should we do? We elected to take the route that performing a task well requires requisite training, support by leadership, awareness, and follow-up of any issues with visual and concrete examples, continuous on-going discussions as situations evolve, and celebrations or corrective actions practiced accordingly.

Our chosen primary approach included coaching the customers and managers in how to carry out these solutions. The coaching plan includes:

A coach's one-time newsletter outlining steps they should take to bring each department and employee to compliance.

A "kick-off awareness" brochure presented by leadership at department meetings in all facilities that lists the goals of the department and what each employee can do to help their department reach their goals.

A visual aide brochure that references policies that may need to be revisited.

A wall graph displayed and discussed by leadership that illustrates where the department has missed its' performance target in the past, where the department currently is in meeting its' performance target, and where the department hopes to be in the coming months. (This graph is updated on a quarterly basis.)

Each manager supplies one practice scenario that gives employees the opportunity to polish their skills in reaching the performance target.

Employees are informed that reaching performance targets will result in group and individual recognition. Likewise, failure to reach performance targets by any individual will result in warnings and corrective action plans.

Lesson learned

Training is not always the solution. In fact, a training solution for this challenge would have been a loss for our customers and a black mark on our reputation as a quality provider of learning solutions.

But remember, just because training isn't the answer, doesn't mean the training department steps away from the project. We have the expertise to develop and deliver other performance improvement solutions that can help support our organization and its employees.

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I recently found myself faced with a request from a customer to develop a training course for a topic that was already covered by several courses in our learning management system.

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NICHQ - National Institute for Children's Health Quality

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Emily O'Donnell, ScD, MS, NICHQ Senior Analyst

When launching a public health program, one of the first things to do is conduct a needs assessment. A needs assessment helps you determine what needs to be accomplished to reach your project goals. This assessments of needs then informs a project's overall plan and approaches by helping you identify targeted strategies and prioritize resources.

Needs assessments serve as incredibly powerful tools for decision making, resource allocation, and ultimately reaching programmatic goals. They can be utilized across a range of settings (e.g., community, school, hospital, state) to shed light on a variety of topics, such as what programmatic actions should be taken to improve breastfeeding rates in a hospital or increase kindergarten readiness across a state. It's important to conduct needs assessment at the onset of the project, so that programs are appropriately tailored to the individuals and communities you serve.

Not sure where to begin? To help you get started, we've compiled the seven tips below. Following them will ensure that your needs assessment planning, analysis, and subsequent actions are efficient and effective.

Step one: Clearly define your needs assessment objectives

Understand breastfeeding knowledge and intentions of first-time mothers in your community

Understand perceived assets and barriers to breastfeeding among first-time mothers in your community

Assess assets and barriers related to the provision of breastfeeding support in local hospitals and after discharge

Determine necessary training and supports to increase breastfeeding among first-time mothers in your community

Step two: Be realistic about your resources and capacity

Step three: Identify target audiences and data sources

Needs Assessment in Action

Conducting a needs assessment was integral to NICHQ's programmatic planning and evaluation efforts for the Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project. Over a three month-period, NICHQ reached 145 stakeholders, including funders, participants, staff and project directors. Through focus groups, surveys, and interviews, NICHQ captured their current state of knowledge and readiness as well as successes and challenges related to undertaking the aims of the Healthy Start project. After collecting, cleaning, and analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data, NICHQ synthesized findings and produced a comprehensive report shared with project stakeholders and funders. Now, NICHQ can continue to provide technical assistance that is appropriately tailored to support grantees.

Consider, also, the competing priorities of your target audience and how to encourage them to participate in your needs assessment. If sending surveys, include an introductory sentence that shows your appreciation and why the survey responses matter, and be prepared to send multiple reminders to increase response rates. If conducting focus groups, be gracious and consider providing snacks, water, or other incentives to participants to thank them for their time and contributions. Helpful new tools can also increase participation. Photovoice is a tool that helps people use videos and photos to share their environment and experiences with others, which can then inform the needs assessment. This tool can be especially powerful for engaging communities that may have been less likely to participate due to language barriers, poverty, or other social determinants.

Step four: Think small and big when summarizing results

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Seven Steps for Conducting a Successful Needs Assessment

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When launching a public health program, one of the first things to do is conduct a needs assessment. A needs assessment helps you determine what needs to be accomplished to reach your project goals. This assessments of needs then informs a project's overall plan and approaches by helping you identify targeted strategies and prioritize resources.

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Looking at all the things that are involved in creating an eLearning course could make you feel like your first step should be to "Give Up." However, with these 12 steps, we break down the process into manageable chunks, which is a big part of what makes for good eLearning course design. Not so bad, right?

Read through these steps, and soon you'll have a good handle on what is needed and where to start to create your first eLearning courses.

Contrary to popular belief, deciding "we need eLearning because everyone else is doing it" is not really the first step to start. Managers add to this problem by expecting things to just get done, or to "just do it." Many times, they see assessing needs before implementing as a waste of time and value speed in development over all else. Starting an eLearning course based on assumptions is a sure way to fail though.

The first step to creating an eLearning course is, in fact, defining why does your audience need this training? And what it is you want to achieve with this eLearning because otherwise, how will you know if you've reached your goal? A need analysis make sure you aren't doing training just for training's sake.

Conducting a needs analysis: This analysis can range from a simple interview to broader, more in-depth data collection methods that include looking at past training, desired results and the current state of your workforce.

The results of this analysis become your plan for design and what you hope to get your learners to achieve because now you know what they actually need, versus just guessing or assuming. It will also show gaps in current training and how you can close the breach and get results.

This also prevents you from throwing eLearning at a problem it can't solve. Elearning is perfect for addressing gaps in skill or knowledge but is typically not an effective cure for lack of customer satisfaction or a job design problem. By analyzing first, you rule out these other issues and get to the heart of the problem faster than if you have gone on assumption.

Read: DON'T Skip the Training Needs Analysis! Here's Why.
Make sure, you've ask yourself these questions before continuing to the next step:

What problem or challenge is this e-Learning going to overcome?

What do we hope to achieve with elearning? What outcomes do we expect?

How will it help the organization or your client meet their business goals?

Writing a course entirely in Spanish to a group of people just beginning to learn Spanish is not an effective way to teach. This might sound like an extreme example of an eLearning designer not knowing their audience, but consider the fact that this is really no different than teaching a beginning javascript course but including advanced terms with no explanation of them.

Designers often go into a project treating their audience with a one-size-fits-all approach in order to get the information out quickly. This, however, ignores your audience's technical capabilities, existing knowledge, how they will use the knowledge you're giving them and their basic demographics.

If a business has low interest in their training programs from employees, it is often the case that the courses are too difficult or too easy or completely irrelevant to the employees' jobs. By knowing your audience first and learning what they already know and need to know you can create better, more useful content.

Also Read:

Once you've determined why training is needed and who your audience is, it's time to analyze your content. It won't matter how good your course is designed if the content your sharing doesn't have value for your audience. This is why this step is so important.

You have to take the problem you defined in point #1 and find information that addresses it specifically. To do this, we analyze the content and break it down into categories and types:

Categories: Declarative, Procedural and Situated.

Types: Fact, concept, process, procedure, principles, interpersonal skills, and attitudes.

Structure: Defining these categories and types also lets us see how the information is interconnected and how important each piece is, what category is most prevalent, information gaps and how information should be arranged.

Starting out on your eLearning journey without defining the information or skills that you want your learners to obtain by the end is like setting out on a road trip without a destination. While this might make for a neat setup for an indie film about four friends trying to find themselves, this really doesn't work for eLearning.

So, what is a learning objective? It is an expected outcome of each lesson/unit and, overall, what you want your learners to be capable of by the end of the it. They also break down the content from step #3 into more manageable chunks that can be applied to modules within the overall course.

During this step we, as designers, have the job of asking questions and considering both the desirable and undesirable results of the course. Then we write our objectives based on the final desired results. Start by picking 3-4 objectives. Now make sure your content doesn't wander too far away from these objectives.

Creating relevant learning objectives can be a big challenge, and before we accept the challenge we have to make sure these are set under the SMART criteria:

Specific: Make sure you can answer the questions: Who are my learners? What will be accomplished?

Measureable: Can we measure/observe the progress of the objective? If not, then it doesn't make a good objective.

Achievable: Make sure that your goals cannot only be measured but that they can be achieved. This means setting realistic goals for realistic timeframes and available resources.

Relevant: A good objective must make sense for your target audience. Make sure you know why the objectives are necessary and what their impact will be to ensure they are worth the time and effort.

Time-sensitive: Can learners accomplish this by the end of the course? If not, then it is not reasonable or worth considering.

Note: Make sure learning objectives are aligned to business objectives

Also read: Do's and Don'ts for writing learning objectives

Now is the time to decide on your instructional strategy. This strategy is the process or approach by which your course is going to be developed to engage learners. There are a variety of approaches eLearning designers can take including storytelling, discovery learning, situational learning and several others. This infographic guide is a great tool to learn about the primary instructional strategies: Instructional Strategy Infographic

When deciding on a strategy, think about:

The type of content: How can I best teach a fact versus a concept? A procedure versus an interpersonal skill?

Impact: What is the best way to make this training meaningful and relevant?

Objectives: How can I ensure each trainee will master the objective?

Learn the differences between strategies and models here: Models Vs. Strategies Infographic

A storyboard is a rough, visual outline that helps map out how text, pictures, and other elements will look on a page. This will help you see how your page will look before you waste time putting together the final design only to find out the elements don't fit together right.

However, before you start in on the design phase, make sure your content has been approved. There's no reason to include content in your planning if your client or team leaders might end up telling you not to use it.
Download: Storyboard Template
When determining what authoring tools and learning management systems you should use, look at reviews from other designers, available features, cost and what is best for your organization. There is not one tool that works for everybody. Needs vary from one company to another.
Also, look at these aspects to get yourself thinking about what's right for your company:

How many people will be accessing the program at one time? The average? The max?

Is your hardware, including servers, database, and computers, up to implementing the technology?

Will the course be accessed on the company's devices or will each learner be using their own?

Are there required applications to be installed?

Does your company have enough bandwidth to run the courses?

What is your plan for backing up information and security?

How will you maintain your server?

What kind of support system will you offer end users?

Now, it's time to build a working, prototype of a module from your course to make sure it actually works. A prototype defines the representative look-and-feel and functionality of the entire course. It also is used to test out technical functionality. This allows eLearning designers to create and discard multiple versions quickly to get the best fit before wasting too many resources on designing the whole course then finding out something doesn't work.

Note: Get approval of the prototype from the project leader before going for the whole course.

Read: Instructional Design for the Greater Good: Developing a Prototype

Once you have your prototype approved, it's time to start designing the actual course. During this process you need to keep an eye on the original objectives and problems to ensure the course, as a whole, is geared towards solving these.

You also need to determine a design method that meets the needs of learners. Professional eLearning designers use different models. Some of the most popular are: ADDIE/SAM, Gagne's 9 Principles, and Action Mapping among others.

Learn the 4 Top Instructional Models here.

Applying Gagné's 9 Events Of Instruction In eLearning

Take feedback and comments from your team (and clients), make corrections as needed, then publish!

Why do your learners need your course? How will they find it? You know that your course can help them, but now they need to know about it! It's time to promote and market. To do this, focus on the benefits to your learners to get them invested in the learning journey.

Promotion should be part of your development plan, and your very first slide should engage your audience from the start. Creating an internal promotion plan will save you the heartache of creating an awesome course only to find out nobody is taking it.

Determine how effective your course has been by asking your learners. This will help you figure out what you did right and what you can improve on in the future. To determine if this has been achieved, many use Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation.

You will also look at such factors as return on investment, cost, and performance. To get the best idea of your key performance indicators, you should involve the management team and stakeholders.

REFERENCES:
http://www.mylearningspace.com.au/news/6-steps-to-an-effective-learning-strategy/http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i2516e/i2516e.pdf http://www.tacso.org/doc/doc_manual9.pdf https://training.fws.gov/courses/references/job-aids/trainers/HOWTO-create-online-course.pdf http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i2516e/i2516e.pdf

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How to Create an eLearning Course in 12 Steps

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Looking at all the things that are involved in creating an eLearning course could make you feel like your first step should be to "Give Up." However, with these 12 steps, we break down the process into manageable chunks, which is a big part of what makes for good eLearning course design.

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All About Needs Assessments

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Note: This site is moving to KnowledgeJump.com. Please reset your bookmark.

Analysis: The study we do in order to figure out what to do. - Allison Rossett & Kendra Sheldon (2001)

A performance analysis is generally called for when you want to improve a part of the organization (look for needs) or to fix a problem that someone has brought forth. Both are generally fixed in the same manner.

There are four performance improvement needs: Business, Job Performance, Training, and Individual (Phillips, 2002).

When performing an analysis, it is best to take a long term approach to ensure that the performance improvement initiative ties in with the organization's vision, mission, and values. This connects each need with a metric to ensure that it actually does what it is supposed to do. This is best accomplished by linking performance analysis needs with Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluations (Phillips, 2002):

Business Needs are linked to Results or Impact (level 4)

Job Performance Needs are linked to Behavior (level 3)

Training Needs are linked to learning (level 2)

Individual Needs are linked to Reaction (level 1)

By linking the analysis and evaluations models together, a total system concept is formed:

Analysis is performed to determine what is needed, thus it begins with a gap analysis: The "needs" of the organization minus the present performance level equals the gap.

Performance Improvement is a tool to bridge the performance gap

At this time, do not worry about how you are going to bridge the gap (creating content and context). Rather, the goal is to discover the present level of performance and the performance that is actually required. In addition, find out the "why." That is, what is causing the gap?

The Japanese have an interesting performance improvement concept - they ask "why" five times when confronted with a problem. By the time the fifth why is answered, they believe they have found the ultimate cause (root) of the problem. So when looking at a performance gap, look deep - "What exactly is causing the gap?"

Once you understand the problem (gap), then you need to see how it fits in with the various levels of the organization. The chart below shows the basic outline of a Performance Analysis and how Phillips' Four Needs and Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluations link in with Rummler & Brache's Three Level Performance Framework:

Click a topic on the map for more information on the subject

Backwards planning or more specifically, backwards analysis, should be used. That is, look at the broader goals of the organization and then work your way down to individual needs.

Business Needs

Investigate the problem or performance initiative and see how it supports the mission statement, leader's vision, and/or organizational goals, etc. Fixing a problem or making a process better is just as good as an ROI, if not better. Organizations that focus strictly on ROI are normally focusing on cost-cutting. And you can only cut costs so far before you start stripping out the core parts of a business. A much better approach is to improve a performance or process that supports a key organization goal, vision, or mission.

When senior executives were asked the most important training initiatives, 77% cited, "aligning learning strategies with business goals"; 75% cited, "ensuring learning content meets workforce requirements"; and 72%, "boosting productivity and agility" (Training Magazine, Oct 2004). Thus, senior leadership is not looking at training to be a profit center (that is what other business units are for), rather they are looking at performance improvement initiatives to help "grow" the organization so that it can reach its goals and perform its mission.

The goal is to make an impact or get some sort of result. So once you have identified the gap between present performance and the organization's goals and vision; create a level 4 evaluation (impact) that measures it - that is, what criteria must be met in order to show that the gap has actually been bridged?

To ensure you have accurately captured the Business Needs, the analysis must look at the needs of the Organizational Level and measure the Results or Impact.

Job Performance Needs

While the first analysis looked at business needs, this analysis looks at the job performance needs and these two needs could slightly differ. The first need, business, often has a slightly more visionary or future look to it, while the job performance need normally looks at what is needed now. Thus, business needs often tend to be more developmental in nature (future orientated), while job performance needs are normally more related towards the present.

This is perhaps the most important need to look at as it links the performer with the organization. When analyzing job performance, you want to look at the entire spectrum that surrounds the job: processes, environment, actual performance verses needed performance, etc, thus it often helps to divide the analysis into three groups: people, data, and things.

To ensure you have captured the Job Performance Needs, the analysis must look at the Process Level and measure the Performance (Behavior) of the job holders.

Some tools that should help are:

After assessing the business and job performance needs, you should have a pretty good idea of what needs to be fixed and future requirements. Analyze your findings and then start making plans for any needed performance interventions, such as training and development, job aids, coaching and mentor programs, process improvement, etc.

Training Needs

While Phillips named this part of the analysis Training Needs, a better term might have been Performance Intervention Need. That is, you need to think beyond training, and determine what type of performance intervention will actually bridge the performance gap.

As you assess the performance for any needed interventions, look at the Job/Performer requirements, that is, what the performer needs to know in order for the performance intervention to be successful. In addition, look at how you are going to evaluate any learning requirements (level 2). It is one thing to determine the learning needs (skill, knowledge, & self system [attitude, metacognition, etc.]), but it is quite another thing to ensure that those requirements actually take place.

Individual Needs

The Individual Needs Analysis is the identification of the target population. While this is closely related to the Training Need above, in that they both look at the Job/Performer Level, Individual needs go a little bit deeper. It ensures that the performance intervention actually conforms to the individual requirements. For example, in the Training Needs analysis, it might be determined that the job holders need to learn a new process. In this need analysis, the target population is looked at more closely to determine the actual content, context, and delivery method of the performance intervention.

In the Training Needs analysis, you look at learners as whole, while in this need analysis you look at them as individually as possible to determine Job/Performer levels. In addition, you want to determine how well this analysis was carried out by using a level one evaluation - Reaction. Throughout the training industry this evaluation is also known as smiley sheets - how well did the learners like the performance intervention. This is entirely the wrong thing to measure as it does not matter if the learners like it or not (although we normally do want to them to like it as they will normally learn and perform better). What matters the most is, "does it actually help them to improve their performance?" Thus, it needs to go beyond smiley sheets and actually measure their self-system.

Putting It All Together

The whole ideal behind the backwards analysis concept is to look at the system, identify a need, build an evaluation (measurement instrument) that identifies the objective that is required, identify the "why", select the intervention, and then build content and context that will bridge the gap between the need and the objective. Once you have a program in place, performing an evaluation should be a snap because you already have the measurement tools in place.

Reference

Phillips, J., Phillips, P. (2002). Reasons Why Training & Development Fails...and What You Can Do About It. Training Magazine, September 2002 (pp.78-85).

Rossett, A., Sheldon, K. (2001). Beyond the Podium: Delivering Training and Performance to a Digital World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, p. 67.

Rummler, G., Brache, A., (1990). Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Training Magazine. (2004). Missing Artillery. Oct., p15.

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Note: This site is moving to KnowledgeJump.com. Please reset your bookmark. Analysis: The study we do in order to figure out what to do. - Allison Rossett & Kendra Sheldon (2001) A performance analysis is generally called for when you want to improve a part of the organization (look for needs) or to fix a problem that someone has brought forth.

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Training Needs Assessment

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Introduction

The purpose of a training needs assessment is to identify performance requirements and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by an agency's workforce to achieve the requirements. An effective training needs assessment will help direct resources to areas of greatest demand. The assessment should address resources needed to fulfill organizational mission, improve productivity, and provide quality products and services. A needs assessment is the process of identifying the "gap" between performance required and current performance. When a difference exists, it explores the causes and reasons for the gap and methods for closing or eliminating the gap. A complete needs assessment also considers the consequences for ignoring the gaps.

There are three levels of a training needs assessment:

Organizational assessment evaluates the level of organizational performance. An assessment of this type will determine what skills, knowledge, and abilities an agency needs. It determines what is required to alleviate the problems and weaknesses of the agency as well as to enhance strengths and competencies, especially for Mission Critical Occupation's (MCO). Organizational assessment takes into consideration various additional factors, including changing demographics, political trends, technology, and the economy.

Occupational assessment examines the skills, knowledge, and abilities required for affected occupational groups. Occupational assessment identifies how and which occupational discrepancies or gaps exist, potentially introduced by the new direction of an agency. It also examines new ways to do work that can eliminate the discrepancies or gaps.

Individual assessment analyzes how well an individual employee is doing a job and determines the individual's capacity to do new or different work. Individual assessment provides information on which employees need training and what kind.

The Training Needs Assessment Process

1. Determine Agency Benefits of Needs Assessment- this part of the process will sell and help the decision makers and stakeholders understand the concept of the needs assessment. Needs assessment based on the alignment of critical behaviors with a clear agency mission will account for critical occupational and performance requirements to help your agency: a) eliminate redundant training efforts, b) substantially reduce the unnecessary expenditure of training dollars, and c) assist managers in identifying performance requirements that can best be satisfied by training and other developmental strategies. To go beyond learning and actually achieve critical behaviors the agency will also need to consider how required drivers will sustain desired outcomes.
Key steps include:

Identify key stakeholders

Solicit support

Describe desired outcomes that will contribute to mission objectives

Clarify critical behaviors needed to achieve desired outcomes

Define required drivers essential to sustain the critical behaviors

2. Plan- The needs assessment is likely to be only as successful as the planning.

Set goals/objectives for the needs assessment

Evaluate organizational (agency) readiness and identify key roles

Evaluate prior/other needs assessments

Prepare project plan

Inventory the capacity of staff and technology to conduct a meaningful training skills assessment and analysis

Clarify success measures and program milestones

3. Conduct Needs Assessment

Obtain needs assessment data (e.g., review strategic plans, assess HR metrics, review job descriptions, conduct surveys, review performance appraisals)

Analyze data

Define performance problems/issues: occupational group/individuals

Describe critical behaviors needed to affect problems/issues

Determine and clarify why critical behaviors do not currently exist

Research integrated performance solutions

If training is the best solution, determine best training and development approach(es)

Assess cost/benefit of training and development approach(es); build a "business case"

Include organizational drivers needed to reinforce the critical behaviors that will affect problems/issues

Describe how the critical behaviors will be monitored and assessed after implementation of the improvement plan

The results of the needs assessment allows the training manager to set the training objectives by answering two very basic questions: what needs to be done, and why is it not being done now? Then, it is more likely that an accurate identification of whom, if anyone, needs training and what training is needed. Sometimes training is not the best solution, and it is virtually never the only solution. Some performance gaps can be reduced or eliminated through other management solutions, such as communicating expectations, providing a supportive work environment, and checking job fit. These interventions also are needed if training is to result in sustained new behaviors needed to achieve new performance levels, for an individual, an occupation, or an entire organization.

If you have any questions regarding training policy or executive development, you can contact the Training and Executive Development Group by sending an email to HRDLeadership@opm.gov.

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The purpose of a training needs assessment is to identify performance requirements and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by an agency's workforce to achieve the requirements. An effective training needs assessment will help direct resources to areas of greatest demand. The assessment should address resources needed to fulfill organizational mission, improve productivity, and provide quality products and services.

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As with any process, having a solid foundation can help ensure success. 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. In this article, we'll discuss what training needs assessment is, what its levels are and how you can do it.

What is a training needs assessment?

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

One of the outputs of the training needs assessment is a list of who needs what kind of training. For instance, your company may find that the IT department is failing to keep up with the industry standards and needs to undergo training that increases their knowledge about the latest technological innovations. Or maybe the IT interns are coming on full-time and require mentoring to become a competitive and productive part of the company.

TNA aims to answer some familiar questions: why, who, how, what and when. Here's a look at the descriptions of the questions and what analysis can to answer them.

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.

Related: What Are the Different Types of Workplace Training?

Training needs assessment levels

There are three levels of training needs assessment. These include the following:

Organizational level

The training needs assessment at the organizational level is a macro-level assessment that helps you determine areas where your employees lack the necessary skills or knowledge and provide need-based training. It aims to answer the following questions:

Where is training most needed?

Is the training needed for a specific department or a group of employees?

Why is the training program recommended as a solution to the current problem?

TNA at the organization level helps you clearly define measurable outcomes for training, allowing you to improve the chances of success of the training program.

For instance, your insurance company's claims processing department constantly gets poor feedback from customers, so you want to improve its customer service rankings. An organizational-level assessment reveals the problems in claims processing and determines the need for training employees involved in claims processing. It can also explain why the training program is necessary and how it can help you achieve your goal of improving your company's customer service.

Operational level

At the operational level (also known as task or job level), TNA determines what kind of training do your employees need to achieve a specified level of proficiency. It involves task analysis, which determines the knowledge and skills required for specific tasks and correlates these requirements to the actual knowledge and skills of your employees. The gaps or problems revealed in this analysis can be used to determine the kind of training your employees need.

TNA at the operational level aims to answer the following questions:

How is the job performed?

What are the performance standards for the job?

What are the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to complete the job successfully?

Some of the data sources that you can use to conduct TNA at the operational level include the following:

Job specifications

Job description

Work performance standards

Information from small and midsized enterprises (SMEs)

Analysis of operational problems

Individual level

At the individual or personal level, the TNA determines how each employee performs his or her role. The difference between the actual performance and the expected performance helps you determine if there is really a need for TNA at the individual level.

TNA at the individual level gives you a complete picture of your employees' performance and whether their performance meets expected standards. TNA at this level aims to answer the following questions:

What is the expected performance?

Do your employees possess the necessary knowledge and skills?

What is the gap between the expected and actual performance?

What impedes your employees to perform efficiently?

What training program must be provided to your employees to meet expected performance standards?

How to conduct a training needs assessment

There are four steps you should take to successfully conduct a training needs assessment. These steps include the following:

1. Determine desired outcomes

2. Identify problems or specific points of pain

3. Determine desired knowledge, skills and behaviors

4. Set training timelines and priorities

5. Choose training needs assessments and formats

1. Determine desired outcomes

Determine where things are not working the way you need or want them to, and what success in those areas would look like. For instance, you may want to improve customer retention by about 5%, reduce support call time to under three minutes or increase new customer acquisition by 10%. To establish the metrics for success of your training program, you have to meet with your team leads, supervisors, managers, directors and other stakeholders. Once you have identified what your goals are, you can easily determine the behaviors that must be changed in order to reach those goals.

Related: Setting Goals to Improve Your Career

2. Identify problems or specific points of pain

The next step is to match your desired outcomes with the improvements in information, actions and abilities that support them. To do so, you have to break down duties and processes inherent to the outcomes so you can determine specific problems or points that need to be addressed.

For instance, if you want to decrease the volume of calls your customer support receives, you need to examine what causes the volume of calls you are currently receiving. The problem may lie with the information customers receive about your product or services, with how calls are recorded and followed-up on, with the frequency and level of proactive communication between customer contacts and account managers or with a combination of all of those.

There are a number of ways to identify areas that require improvement. Here are some of the most common and effective:

Individual interviews: You may also interview your employees, supervisors and clients to identify problems or gaps. If your company is providing safety training, for instance, interviewing the employees who have experienced or witnessed an accident would be advisable. Also, interviewing employees who have never had an accident could be useful in developing a training program that includes safe practices and procedures. If the accidents involved equipment, you may need to interview the company that serviced or manufactured the equipment. The information you can gather from your interviews can help you identify gaps that your company needs to address.

Related: How to Prepare for 9 Interview Types

3. Determine desired knowledge, skills and behaviors

Once you have identified the specific problems you need to address, you can match training topics to the identified skill gaps. To do so, you should first come up with a list of knowledge, skills and competencies each trained employee needs to attain the established objectives. Then, you must have a way to determine if training has been successful at the individual level-the way to measure if the identified competencies and skills were achieved to the level required. These metrics for success are usually expressed as a series of learning goals tailored to each problem and the desired business outcome.

4. Set training timelines and priorities

Once you have determined the knowledge, skills or behaviors that your employees must develop to achieve established goals, it's now time to develop the full training agenda. To do so, you must first determine the targeted end date for the initiative, and then rank priorities for individual sessions and groups and put them on a schedule. You should determine priorities based on their urgency (how quickly you need to see results from employees) and sequence (training that must occur before other training can happen).

Related: Requesting a Deadline Extension at Work: Steps and Examples

5. Choose training needs assessments and formats

Now that you know who your target participants are, what training is necessary, what your goals are and how quickly the training program needs to be complete, you can choose how you want to administer the training. Some good options include virtual or in-person instructor-led sessions, self-guided audio and video programs, computer-based simulations and online training. Your Learning and Development resource-consultancy or in-house-can help you choose the right course suitable for your company and project.

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As with any process, having a solid foundation can help ensure success. 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. In this article, we'll discuss what training needs assessment is, what its levels are and how you can do it.

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Learner Personas for Instructional Design

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Learner Personas for Instructional Design

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One thing we can learn from the field of User Experience Design is how to create user personas, better known as learner personas in the world of eLearning. What is a persona? It is a well-developed fictional profile that reflects the characteristics of the audience groups you are designing for.

These audience groups share common characteristics, such as their training goals, job responsibilities, educational background, attitudes, skills and behaviors. Every course has at least one audience group and most courses have several.

Why Develop Learner Personas?

Creating a learner persona can help designers become more aware of their audience. Thinking through what a particular audience group needs and how they will react as they proceed through a course provides a tangible focus for the design. With a persona in mind, the designer might build more engaging lessons and discover new ways that learners can construct knowledge. Developing learner personas makes the abstract idea of your audience into something concrete.

In truth, many designers probably carry around a model of what their audience members are like. But developing personas helps to formalize the models so they can be documented, shared and used throughout the design process. This creates a consistency and unity in who your audience members are across the entire design and development team. Here is a three-step process.

Step One: Gather Information First

The most effective personas are going to emerge out of an audience analysis that includes interviews and real conversations with sample audience members as well as supervisors and stakeholders in the training. This is one of the best ways to ensure your personas reflect reality rather than a projection of your ideal learner. For help with conducting interviews, see Best Practices for Interviewing Your Audience. Other sources of information might come from your client's printed collateral and website or discussions with subject matter experts or personnel office.

You can gain additional insight about your audience by using empathy maps. This article explains how: Empathy Maps: A Tool for Learning Experience Design.

Step 2: Write Your Learner Persona

With this information in hand, write a descriptive profile of an audience group member. Give this person a name and borrow traits from real individuals of the group if you were lucky enough to hold interviews. Describe your persona's demographics, job responsibilities, motivations for taking the training, experiences at work, attitude toward online learning, skill and educational levels and so on. Some groups go so far as to add a photo to their persona. Developing personas can be a collaborative process done with team members or created solo.

Step 3: Use The Learner Persona

In the end, you should have several learner personas that provide a tangible sense of your audience members. Always share them with your team. Keep the personas in mind throughout design and development as though they are someone you know. Refer to them. Converse about them. Make them your imaginary friend. "Would Kathy want to spend her time playing this game?" "What would it take for Ahmed to pass the certification test?"

The Persona Debate

In User Experience circles there is an ongoing debate over whether personas are a help or a hindrance. Some contend that personas are a poor approach for understanding the needs and wants of the audience. Detractors say that personas promote distance between designers and users; that they are a product of what designers wish their users would be like. They say personas don't reflect unique individuals and they prevent designers from having empathy for their users.

Avoid the Persona Traps

My recommendation would be to try personas the next time you're working on a project with multiple audience groups. Then follow these tips to avoid the traps:

Try to have conversations with sample members of your audience groups. Even a few conversations can help you remember the individuals behind the persona.

Ensure the use of personas helps your team personalize and customize the design. If you find it has the opposite effect, you're headed down the wrong path.

Watch that stereotypes and social judgments don't slip into your personas. These unrealistic profiles defeat the purpose.

Build empathy for the audience groups. The more you can imagine their life and their story, the more likely you are to understand who they are.

Examples of Personas in Other Fields

Because it's important to step out of your field, you can learn more about personas from user experience design and marketing. Reviewing the personas in the articles below can give you an idea of how to develop personas for instructional design audiences.

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Learner Personas for Instructional Design

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One thing we can learn from the field of User Experience Design is how to create user personas, better known as learner personas in the world of eLearning. What is a persona? It is a well-developed fictional profile that reflects the characteristics of the audience groups you are designing for.

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Think about what your learners are doing right now. Are they on the floor helping a customer? Are they hopping from meeting to meeting? What needs do they have during their day to day jobs? If you were to sit down with them for a cup of coffee, what kinds of stories and experiences would they share?

Getting to know your learner and wanting to design the best training that you can for them is at the heart of a human-centered design practice called learner experience (LX) design. Learner experience design focuses on developing empathy for your learners, understanding their needs, and creating a training experience that supports those needs.

But how do you go about getting to know your learners in a way that will best support their learning experience?

Taking a Lesson from Software Design

Learning experience design pulls from the user experience research and design practices that have been used by successful product and software companies for years. They use what's called a " User Persona " to identify different categories of their product users. A user persona is a made up "person" that serves as a representation for a general group of users that would be using that product. The user persona will typically include the persona's background, age, skills, comfort with technology, and goals that the person may have for using that software product.

While designing the product, the design and development team will keep this persona in mind to help make sure that they are solving for the needs that their real users will have. It helps them more readily put themselves in the shoes of their user and ask questions like "Would Clark be able to meet his goals with our product?"

Audience Analysis through Learner Personas

Like software design, having a human-centered instructional design strategy can help us create better training! By creating learner personas, we can ensure that we are keeping our learners and their needs at the heart of all of our decisions.

Like user personas, a learner persona includes background information, goals, and pain points, as well as information more geared towards instructional design-like job functions, learning preferences, and attitudes.

The Benefits of Using Learner Personas

Prevent Self-Referential Design

Learner personas can help to identify the needs, goals, and challenges of our learners while ensuring that we are making decisions based off of their perspectives instead of just our own. If every learner thought the same way that we did, our training would always hit the mark! Instead, we have to consider the diversity of our audience.

For example, I may be a visual learner so creating a diagram or animation would make sense to me as a way to teach a new process. But for Barbara who learns best with hands-on activities, this strategy wouldn't be as effective. Considering her needs can help me come up with better training strategies that will hit on a wider range of learning styles.

Create More Relevant Messaging

Let's be honest-As much as we would love our learners to be enthusiastic about 100% of their training 100% of the time; most learners are thinking one thing when they sit down to do their training, "Why do I have to do this?" Learners are much more apt to engage in training and enact new practices if they feel it is relevant to them.

Thinking through your learners' attitudes towards training, their expectations, and motivations can all help you craft a message that conveys the importance of your training and excites your learners! For example, a seasonal employee like Carrie (below) may not understand the importance of her training since she isn't a year-round associate. But stressing how the skills covered in the training are transferrable to other experiences and jobs or about how high performance could lead to advanced career opportunities within the company could lead to Carrie being more engaged in her training.

Design with Empathy

It's easy for us to just think of our learners in terms of generalizations and statistics-but there's more to them than just their ages or job codes. Designing with empathy means connecting with our learners, understanding their needs, and creating a better learning experience for them. That's where creating a realistic persona has real power.

So, go beyond the basics and include details like education, job experiences, motivations, the names of all of their pets, etc. We even recommend including stock photos in your personas!

These details may seem superfluous at first, but they're critical to bringing your personas to life. Flushed out personas feel like real people and using them to guide your design process makes it easier to step outside of yourself and into your learner's shoes. By empathizing and relating to your learners, your team will not only have a stronger connection and understanding of them, but you'll find yourselves with an even stronger motivation to make your training the best that it can be for your personas.

Where Do I Get this Information?

The best and most accurate personas are embodiments of audience data and analysis. This data could come from in-person interviews with learners or online surveys that ask learners about their learning styles, experiences on the job, and what kinds of support they need for different training topics. But when it's not possible to talk with your learners directly; don't fret!

Talk with subject matter experts or managers about their experiences and the stories they've heard from the field. Ask them what daily challenges your learners face in their job, and what feedback they've heard about current training practices. Your LMS Administrators may have additional training information from your learners including demographics, previous training performances, and other trends.

When used correctly, learner personas are a powerful way to bring human-centered design to your current development process. And they can lead to more effective and imaginative ways to create training! We recommend creating at least 2-3 personas for a project to ensure that you're addressing multiple needs and evaluating your training through multiple perspectives.

To get started with personas today, download our free Learner Persona template. Included is a fully editable template, examples, and instructions on how to create your own personas!

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Using Learner Personas for Empathy Driven Training

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Learner personas ensure that we are keeping our learners and their needs at the heart of all of our decisions, which makes for better learning experiences.

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Transform Stakeholders' Wants Into Business Needs

Stakeholders aren't learning professionals, so they tend to approach L&D with what they want-aka solutions-instead of what they need. But if you don't know what the underlying problem is, how can you be sure that training will solve it?

A number of years ago, I worked with a client whose stakeholders wanted a new onboarding program (a solution). On the surface, it seemed like a simple enough request. Onboarding programs are designed to orient newcomers to the company's mission and values, organization and structure, products and services, and such. Ultimately, these programs strive to make the new hire feel that they made a great choice by joining. But there was a twist...

The Needs Analysis Disconnect

When we started talking about desired outcomes (more on these later), the client mentioned things like reducing attrition rates and increasing engagement -metrics that are usually tied to the emotional, cultural, and social aspects of the job, such as having a sense of purpose, feeling valued, and having positive relationships with management and leadership.
Something didn't add up.
I knew that an onboarding program wouldn't solve the business needs as a stand-alone solution. So, I asked the client two simple questions:

1. Do you know why people are leaving?

2. What does your latest employee engagement survey say?

Sadly, the client either didn't know or couldn't tell us the answers. They just wanted the new onboarding program.

This response spoke volumes. It told me that the client:

Didn't fully understand the stakeholders' needs or what was driving the business need

Couldn't see the disconnect between the underlying business need, the desired outcomes, and the solution

Hadn't considered how they would evaluate the success of the program

Most worryingly, it told me that the client was prepared to risk losing trust and credibility with the stakeholders by giving them what they wanted rather than what they needed.

What the stakeholder wants and what the stakeholder needs are often two very different things. As an L&D professional, your job is to help them see the difference. You can do this by consulting with them and asking questions to fully understand what they want, so that together, you can uncover what they need. As a bonus, you will build relationships, establish credibility, and gain each other's trust throughout the process.

So, how do you consult with your stakeholders? What are the right questions to ask? And what do you need to know to steer the conversation and influence their decisions?

I've got you covered! I've compiled six questions that you should ask your stakeholders every time they come to you with a training request, to effectively (and quickly!) identify the business need.

Six Stakeholder Analysis Questions To Identify Business Needs And Inform Your Learning Solutions

Question 1. What is the training need? (What has driven this request?)

All training needs are either about advancing people's knowledge and skills or about changing their behavior.

So how do you get your stakeholders to talk about knowledge, skills, and behaviors?

When your stakeholders come to you with solutions-and they will!-you'll need to steer the conversation to focus on the underlying problem. Take a look at this example.

When you ask your stakeholders to describe what's going on, they'll be forced to respond in a way that addresses performance:

The information you have now is so much more revealing than what you started with. You now have a better sense of the specific problem and whom it's affecting. It still doesn't reveal the full picture, but you now have a jumping-off point to explore the need further with the stakeholder.

Question 2. What are the desired outcomes? (What does success look like?)

Desired outcomes are different from, but connected to, the learning objectives that will eventually steer your solution design.

Like learning objectives, desired outcomes should be observable or measurable. Where they differ is that learning objectives are typically linked to knowledge, skills, or behavior, whereas the desired outcomes are about business results and impact.

When you can clearly define the desired outcomes, you'll have a greater chance of designing a solution that will add value and create impact to the business. And when you can do those things, you will gain the trust and credibility you deserve!

Question 3. Who is the target audience?

Knowing who the target audience is will help you prepare for the learner audience analysis. It will also help you determine whether you need to adapt your solution for different audiences.

If your target audience is limited to the members of one group or team, you'll know that you can tailor the content and message specifically to them. If your stakeholder identifies more than one audience, however, you'll need to ask whether there is a primary audience among that group and, if so, who the secondary and tertiary audiences are. This way, you can ensure that the needs of your primary audience are met first. You can then adapt the content to the other audiences afterward as needed

Question 4. What should they (the target audience) be doing?

This question is actually two questions in disguise. How? As soon as you ask, "What should they (the target audience) be doing?" I guarantee that your stakeholders won't be able to resist also telling you what they are currently doing. And when you know the answer to both of those questions, you'll have your performance gap. And when you know your performance gap, you can define the learning objectives. Bingo!

Question 5. How will we measure success?

Now that you know what the desired outcomes and performance gaps are, you can begin planning how you will measure success after you identify business needs.

Remember, you are still in the analysis phase, so all you have to determine right now is the evaluation strategy you are going to use. Assuming you're using the Kirkpatrick Model [1], will it be Level 1, 2, 3, 4, or a combination?

This is the time to step up your consulting game. Use your expertise to inform, guide, and influence the stakeholder into choosing the most appropriate and robust strategy.

To help inform their decision, make sure you discuss the following:

Evaluation options: Share examples of the types of activities you might design to measure at each level.

Benefits of evaluating at each level: Reveal the insights and results that each level of evaluation will yield.

Effort involved at each level: Call out what it might take to design, develop, and implement the activity or approach. Don't forget to factor in what it will take to capture and analyze the results.

Risks of not doing an evaluation: (This is the big one and helps influence the decision-making.) Emphasize the value of the evaluation strategy by calling out what might be at stake if you don't measure results or impact.

Check out Chapter 1 of our new guide, The Needs Analysis Playbook for more tips and tools to help you with your evaluation conversation.

Question 6. What Might Enable or Derail the Success of the Solution?

The final stakeholder question relates to the application of the learning. As learning professionals, we spend most of our time thinking about success in terms of outcomes and impact-all the stakeholder analysis questions I have shared so far have been focused on just that. We sometimes forget, however, to think about factors outside of the solution that can enable or derail its success.

Interestingly, the things that enable success can also be barriers.

Internal enablers and barriers are the factors within the learner's control that can determine whether the learner is willing to apply the learning, such as: their mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs.

Changing people's attitudes isn't easy. You can, however, shift mindsets, and you can acknowledge and influence people's beliefs. You just need to know what they are, first.

External enablers and barriers are the factors outside of the learners control that can determine whether the learner is able to apply the learning such as: policies and procedures, systems and tools, culture, and people.

When any of these act as barriers, you'll need to address them with your stakeholders and explore removing them or working around them.

Identify The Business Need-And Determine If Training Will Meet The Need

Think of the answers to these six questions as your North Star. The knowledge and insights you capture here will steer everything that follows-not only in the rest of the needs analysis itself but also throughout the process of designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating your learning solution.

The stakeholder analysis tells you:

What has driven the business need-and what the problem is that you are trying to solve

What the desired outcomes are-and what success looks like

Who the target audience is-and whether you need to consider other audiences' needs, either now or later in the process

What the performance gaps are-and what your learning objectives should be

Which evaluation strategy you need to implement-and how you will measure success

Above all, the stakeholder analysis will give you the answer to the $10 million question: Will training solve the problem? And what, if anything, will you need to ensure success (business champions, change management strategies, updates to policies or procedures, mindset shifts, etc.)?

Use these six questions to kick off your needs analysis, identify the business need, and begin to build trust with your stakeholder.

Conclusion

Need more help with your needs analysis? Check out our eBook, The Needs Analysis Playbook: How to Make L&D a Trusted Partner in Your Organization, for a detailed walkthrough of the process. Packed with advice, tips and tricks, and step-by-step instructions, we reveal how you can elevate your learning solution designs and gain that all-important stakeholder buy-in.
References:
[1] https://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/Our-Philosophy/The-Kirkpatrick-Model.

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The Six Questions Every L&D Professional Should Ask Stakeholders To Identify Business Needs

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Stakeholders aren't learning professionals, so they tend to approach L&D with what they want-aka solutions-instead of what they need. But if you don't know what the underlying problem is, how can you be sure that training will solve it? A number of years ago, I worked with a client whose stakeholders wanted a new onboarding program (a solution).

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25 Questions HR Should Ask When Assessing Training Needs

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25 Questions HR Should Ask When Assessing Training Needs We all know that learning and development (L&D) is integral to organizational health-helping employees to learn and grow is a strategic move that can push a company ahead of its competitors. But workplace training

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Many organizations share a common assumption that if an employee isn't doing something "right," then he or she needs more training. This assumption, and others that immediately look to training as the go-to solution, may sound like job security to a learning professional or an easy solution to upper leadership.

However, the idea that training can solve any and all behavioral or productivity problems can lead an organization to failure, which may result in a loss of support for training programs altogether.

Traditional training models can solve one basic problem: lack of knowledge or skills. A performance issue resulting from a lack of knowledge or skills is easy to fix: Provide effective training and an ongoing learning and support system, and the problem is solved.

If it's not a training issue, then training won't solve the performance problem, no matter how stellar the training solution is. This type of failure will convince upper leadership that training is ineffective. To ensure the longevity and success of your training program, it's crucial to offer solutions that work rather than the same repetitive go-to training.

What about all of the other causes of performance issues? If training only addresses one cause, does that mean your training program is unnecessary? Absolutely not! Every quality training program can support overall performance improvement solutions.

The major obstacle facing learning professionals is educating leadership on:

The difference between training issues and performance issues

The importance of a thorough needs analysis to identify whether a problem is a performance or training issue

The value of using the results of the needs analysis to determine the best and most effective solution

Employee productivity, job satisfaction and overall performance will improve drastically with one simple change: Eliminate blanket training solutions, and start matching the right solution to each individual issue.

NEEDS ANALYSIS

Being fully prepared with an updated and organized performance needs analysis, or gap analysis, will be your best tool.

Whether you are a training professional who works with different businesses or a corporate trainer for one business, take some time to develop your own needs analysis form and process. It's important to tailor the needs analysis to the business you are serving and to your development style. Create a tool that feels natural and that you can use quickly and easily.

Whenever you are talking with management and upper leadership about possible training issues or assignments, take the opportunity to educate them on the difference between training issues and performance issues, and offer to develop the best and most effective solution.

Your needs analysis should include methods to help identify if any of the following performance issues exist. Sometimes the best needs analysis is done by shadowing employees for first-hand accounts of their experiences, asking questions and actively listening to them. The real cause typically reveals itself quickly when you go straight to the source.

PERFORMANCE ISSUES

Because people are complex and deal with vast amounts of competing demands, the number of issues, contributing factors and causes of performance issues can be endless (which makes the needs analysis so important and the results sometimes unpredictable). Here are some common issues matched with solutions.

Issue: They know how to do the task but don't realize that they're doing it incorrectly.

Solution: Feedback

Feedback is one of the most powerful learning tools. Most adults are capable of closing their own performance gaps once they know they exist. Provide regular and consistent feedback to communicate clear expectations and areas for improvement. You can give the feedback, or you can provide training and tools to the individuals responsible for giving feedback on the best ways to do so.

Issue: They forget some of the steps in the process.

Solution: Job aid

People cannot be expected to memorize long or difficult processes. If there are detailed steps that need to be completed, it is vital to provide a job aid to assist the learner. The aid can come in the form of an electronic knowledge base or a paper handout, but there must be a resource to which employees can refer for help completing each step.

Issue: They know howto do it but repeatedly forget when to do it.

Solution: Job aid or automated reminder

If the flow of individual tasks is not intuitive, it's important to provide a solution to help the employees remember it. You could provide a visual job aid or, even better, improve the system by providing an automated reminder.

Issue: The process is too difficult or cumbersome.

Solution: Simplify the process.

Expectations must be realistic. If the reason an employee is not performing is because the task is too difficult or cumbersome, take the time to fully understand the process and then simplify it. Even if you are only able to simplify one step, employees will appreciate that you took the time to understand what they were doing and that you made the effort to improve it. Promise to continue this effort, and you will contribute to a culture of positive change in which employees are more engaged, loyal and motivated.

Issue: They don't understand why they have to do it.

Solution: Explain why.

Adult learners need to understand why they are expected to do something and what will happen if they don't. This simple solution typically ends in a comment like, "Oh, I had no idea that's why we were doing that." If learners don't appreciate the value of a task, they will not do it.

Issue: The process or tasks actually bring little to no value.

Solution: Eliminate the task.

By exploring the reason for the original task/expectation, you may find that it isn't even necessary. It's important to ask, "What would happen if they didn't do this?" If the impact is minimal, you may want to stop doing it. Sometimes employees aren't completing a task you think is important because it actually adds no value.

Issue: There's a better way of doing it.

Solution: Ask, listen and improve the process.

When setting expectations, it's critical to involve the end users. When you fail to hear their perspective, the process will inevitably be more difficult than it should be. When people know there's a better way to do something, they will either complete it your way and be frustrated, complete it their own way and frustrate you, or not do it at all. Take the time to ask, listen and be open to improving processes.

Issue: The tool or application isdifficult to use.

Solution: Fix the usability issue.

You should never blame an employee or training program for a tool or application that is difficult to use. If improving the usability is not an option, acknowledge the issues and reset the expectations to be fair and realistic.

Issue: The task is done infrequently.

Solution: Make the process/application intuitive and easy to remember, or provide a job aid.

Learners need repetitive practice to master a skill and retain information. If employees are expected to complete a process or use an application so infrequently that they can't remember what they did last time, no amount of training will solve that problem. The solution instead is to develop applications and processes that are intuitive and have a high degree of memorability. If that's not possible, it's critical that you provide a job aid for the employees to use when the task is required.

THE COURAGE TO CHALLENGE TRAINING ISSUES

By taking the time to identify the true cause of performance issues, you will be able to support your organization's efforts to create positive change, and your training program will develop a reputation for solving problems and improving employee performance.

The next time you hear "I think our employees need some training on that topic," have the courage to educate others about the difference between training issues and performance issues. Share your vision for identifying, developing and delivering solutions that work.

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Training versus Performance: It Isn't Always a Training Issue

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Many organizations share a common assumption that if an employee isn't doing something "right," then he or she needs more training. This assumption, and others that immediately look to training as the go-to solution, may sound like job security to a learning professional or an easy solution to upper leadership.

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ATD Article

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You know what they say: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Similarly, if you believe that training is the best solution to every performance problem, you may end up spending way more time and money than you need to fix things.Yes, it seems a little odd that learning and dev…

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What should a needs analysis report include

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Lots of them!!!