Introduction
Employees are the main foundation of every organization. And the better they are at what they do, the more your business will grow.
That's why training for with the right skills and experience is crucial.
But first, you need to know what skills will enhance productivity, personal growth and overall success.
If you don't, you'll have an unprepared team, and a lot of headaches.
To determine your employee training needs, you first need to analyze a few things, such as your company goals, current performance and expected performance.
Let's dig in.
Why is a training needs analysis necessary?
A training analysis is almost as essential as the training itself. Here's why.
Eliminate training errors & guesswork
But without a training needs analysis, you won’t be able to figure out the vital competencies needed to make your training program effective.
"Competencies" are the specific hard and soft skills that each team and individual needs to learn. Once you figure them out, you can be sure you’ll be able to create a program that helps meet company goals.
Otherwise, you might have to guess-pick different skills that will become irrelevant in the long run or not essential in the short term.
Prevent unproductive spending
Training isn't cheap, and cost is one of the biggest concerns when launching a training program. Most companies only have a limited budget, so they can’t keep pumping in more money without tipping the financial balance.
By helping you pick the right competencies to focus on, a training needs analysis reduces the possibility of unproductive spending.
Once you compile your goal and objectives into a document or design a roadmap to connect them by using the monoline brushes for Procreate or Procreate cloud brushes, you can easily pinpoint the essential areas to invest in.
In turn, you get to save more and use it for other essential tasks within the organization.
Create happy employees
Your employees want to grow personally and professionally. A training needs analysis helps you design a program unique to their needs and growth path. This will encourage productivity and retention.
As the saying goes, happy employees make up a successful organization.
Now, this is different from randomly conducted training that has no individual value to your workers. That could even touch the wrong nerve and attract resignation letters to your desk.
6 Steps to conduct an effective training needs analysis
Let’s discuss the six essential steps you must consider when conducting your analysis.
1. Understand & evaluate your objectives & goals
What do you want to happen?
Objectives are a set of time-limited plans or actions that you take to achieve those goals.
Let's say your goal is to triple your company’s ROI by 200 percent in six months. The objectives will most likely revolve around upskilling your sales team, equipping them with the right tools, and possibly doubling down on advertisement.
In a bid to understand your objectives, you need to find answers to these questions:
- What is the current employee/organizational performance level?
- What is your expected or baseline performance?
Once you have your answers, it's easy to plan out a solution. Say your current employee performance is below the baseline. Your next step will be to figure out why.
For example, if your salesperson is making fewer conversions than expected, it could be because they lack the psychology of closing sales. To sort that out, you can either get an expert in that niche to handle the training, provide access to ebooks on sales psychology, or do both.
Also, imagine if your employee has all the necessary skills but lacks the tool. In such situations, your objective will be to equip your business with an appropriate tool while ensuring the training session focuses mainly on how to use it.
2. Identify employee skill haps
Now that you know your employees might be lacking the proper skill needed to be more productive, you can figure out what's missing.
The best way to review skill gaps is by creating two different templates — one from your employees and the other from a standard baseline.
For the first one, you can share a survey with your employees and ask them a few questions like:
- Have you ever felt incompetent handling this role?
- Are there any areas of operation that you find really difficult?
- What skill gaps do you perceive you have?
You can also reach out to your company’s stakeholders, internal managers, and other decision-makers who make contact with your employees. Their views will provide valuable results for your review.
The second template should contain detailed information about each role in your company. Under the roles, list the expected or standard competencies - skill and knowledge required to man these roles.
Then compare both templates to see which skills are in the standard template but missing from the employees’ template. Those are the skills you need to prioritize in your training.
3. Choose who & when to train
Training is for everyone in your company, and that includes you. But you can't just set up training for everyone simultaneously. That can lead to workplace chaos.
Instead, you should pick employees who play a vital role in the short term and are needed to maintain the organization's core processes.
Then you can move on to others so long as they have a skill gap that needs to be addressed.
4. Budget & allocate resources
You're almost ready to roll out your training session. Your budget will determine the type of training your employees receive. This means your budget can influence the duration of the training, the trainer's expertise, the resources available, and the number of skill gaps that can be addressed.
So when planning to train your employees, keep in mind how much can be allocated without breaking the bank.
5. Choose how to train
Your training approach should consider the location factor, mode of training, and whether it will be off-duty or on-duty.
Talking about location, you will have to weigh your choices between remote or physical.
Likewise, you might decide to bring in a physical trainer, pay for a course, or use a tool like Scribe to build a knowledge base.
Also, training can be learning on-duty or learning off-duty. On-duty training means your employees are getting trained as they work. This method is quite effective as it exposes them to more practical experiences, consolidating their learning.
6. Create SOPs
Once you figure out which training strategy is economically sustainable and rewarding, it’s time you create a standard operating procedure (SOP).
Your SOP document should highlight the steps you took to identify missing gaps and competencies, what training approaches you adopted, and how you accomplished them.
This, in turn, makes it very easy to conduct another training needs analysis in the future under necessary circumstances.
7. Evaluate the post-training reports
Evaluating post-training reports helps you understand how effective your plans have been.
You need to collect reports from your employees and stakeholders on what they feel about the previous training.
For employees who were involved, roll out a survey to see how satisfied they were with the training. Also, set some performance metrics in place to measure the training effectiveness.
These reports will help you adjust or modify the next training plan for better outcomes.
Key takeaways
Training needs analysis helps you provide the right training for your employees. And this leads to a consistent increase in individual and organizational productivity.
To start, you need to draw out your goals and objectives. Afterward, see the factors that can alter these objectives or your course of action. Then identify the skill gaps - whether soft or hard skills.
Finally, evaluate your budget, the employees to train, and the best training plan to implement. And remember to review your post-training outcomes.
Author Bio
Ayomide Olabode is a professional B2B analyst and the senior SaaS content writer for Digital Gratified. He is so enthusiastic about digging out new market strategies that work. And aside from writing during the day, you can find him trading the forex chart at night.
