Benefits
So often do employees go through training programs that do not reflect on the bottom line of the business. The skills and knowledge the employees gain from such training, if any, do not reflect directly on their performance at work nor on the overall performance of the organization as a whole. The reason behind this stems from providing such employees with training that they are not really in need of or that does not cater for the real needs of the organization. Training needs analysis is the stage that precedes the delivery of the actual training and is meant to solve the problem of spending too much resources on training employees on something that does not reflect on the business bottom line. Following is a list of information sources needed as input in order to carry out the training needs analysis.
Information Sources
- Overall company business plan.
- Employee appraisals.
- Employee surveys.
- Management and supervisors' surveys.
- Misconducts data.
- Timeline of business performance.
- Available training resources.
Company Needs
After collecting required data from the above mentioned sources, a comprehensive analysis of the data is conducted to determine the needs of the company. The needs can be thought of as the gap between the current state of the company and the future state the company aims at reaching.
High Priority Training Needs
After coming up with a list of company needs, the list should be filtered to remove those needs that cannot be met through training. After filtering, the list will contain only company needs that can be fulfilled through training. This list is then prioritized according to importance of each need and the resources it requires in order to be fulfilled. For instance there might be a fairly strong need for training in something, but training in it will need huge resources that are too costly or unavailable, in this case such need is given less priority. A need that will also not reflect on the business bottom line in the near or far future is also given low priority. High priority is given to needs that reflect on the business bottom line and at the same time do not heavily tax business resources.
Training Cycle
After a list of high priority training needs in compiled, training programs to fulfill such needs are designed then delivered. A final step that comes after delivering each training program is assessment of the effectiveness of that program. No proper training cycle can take place unless it starts first with training needs analysis phase followed by a training design phase then a training delivery phase and finally ending with a training assessment phase.