CHAPTER 6

TRAINING NEEDS
ANALYSIS
Rosemarie F. Penalba
Instructor
What Is A Training Needs Analysis?
A training needs analysis is a process that determines which type of
training an employee needs to thrive in their role, fill a knowledge/skill
gap, or develop their learning in order to improve their job
performance.

Typically, the analysis focuses on specific training content that needs to

be completed within a certain time period, instead of focusing on an
employees’ long-term training plan.
There are three different types of training needs analyses
that you can perform, depending on your goals:
Organizational training needs analysis Looks at the company as a whole
to determine which overarching training programs are missing or
lacking.
Team training needs analysisCenters on one department’s specific
training requirements and deficiencies. This training also typically
includes programs focused on collaboration and team-building to
inspire motivation and group problem-solving.
Individual training needs analysis The most customized assessment,
which focuses on an individual employee’s career goals and typically
begins with a performance review or one-on-one evaluation.
Why A Training Needs Analysis?
Great employee training empowers workers with the skills and knowledge they need to boost job
performance and produce optimal results for their company. And for the cherry on top, it fills your
roster with top talent and keeps your business ahead of the competition.

Not to mention it’s what your employees crave—but are likely lacking. Thirty percent of UK
workers say they haven’t received formal workplace training in the last five years, yet nine out of
10 employees want their employer to offer more training courses.

They want programs that are specifically catered to them, their role, their goals, and their career
growth.

And as a business owner or HR professional, so do you, because it means their skills are sharper,
they’re producing higher caliber work, and they’re more likely to stay on the team for longer.
How Business Benefits From Training Needs
Analyses
1. You’ll Solve Issues Before They Happen
Sixty-one percent of working-age adults in the UK don’t believe they have
all of the workplace skills they’ll need for the next five years. And, without
proper training, they (and you) will encounter issues well before then.

Through a training needs analysis, you can identify knowledge gaps and
skill deficiencies before they create issues. You can also determine which
training needs are the most critical and urgent, and prioritize those
programs in your training schedule to proactively overcome obstacles.
CONT.
2. You’ll Uncover New Training Needs
To put it simply: You don’t know what you don’t know. By conducting a training
needs analysis for each of your company’s roles and departments, you’ll
uncover training needs you wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.

3. You’ll Create Impactful Training Plans

Training plans often get overrun with programs and courses you hope will work,
or with stale content that hasn’t been updated to fit the current position. But
once you complete your analyses, you can fill the next quarter, year, and
beyond with valuable courses and plans that speak to your employees’ exact
needs and wants.
CONT.
4. You’ll Stay Focused On Business Goals
Every piece of training you produce should be crafted in pursuit of your
company’s goals. But over time, the two can stray further and further apart.
Performing training needs analyses allows you to compare your current training
modules against your company’s goals to ensure they’re on the same track.

5. You’ll Provide The Right Training To The Right People

No one wants to be stuck in a training session they don’t need. After you
complete your training needs analyses, you’ll know exactly who needs to attend
the training and who doesn’t, saving everyone involved time and resources so
they can focus on their work or on their own targeted training program.
CONT.
6. You’ll Have Better-Performing Employees
Effective reskilling of employees can lift productivity by six to twelve percent, while overall
learning and development can improve skills, service, and motivation.

Employee training is also one of the key drivers of employee engagement, and when
learners are more engaged, they’re more likely to find new roles within their organization,
increasing your retention rates.

7. You’ll Save Money And Resources

Instead of wasting money and resources creating, managing, and reviewing training
programs that aren’t effective, you can put your budget towards building constructive
programs that provide a better return on investment.
Conducting A Training Needs Analysis In 8
Steps
1. Determine Your Goals
Your organization’s goals are constantly growing and changing, as are the roles and responsibilities of
your employees. Compare your current training programs and outcomes with your company’s short-
and long-term goals to ensure they’re aligned.
Next, determine the specific goals you want to achieve through employee training. Consider:
The outcomes and improvements you’re expecting.
How you will measure progress, success, or failure.
If you’ll need more than training to achieve the goal.
You should also establish the level of expertise you expect the learner to achieve from the training:
Awareness: They gain a basic knowledge of a topic.
Application: They learn how to complete a specific task.
Mastery: They learn how to complete a task (or become knowledgeable on a topic) to the degree that
they can teach it to someone else afterward.
CONT.
2. Run A Cost Analysis
Part of your planning should include calculating the costs and return on
investment you expect from creating, conducting, and analyzing the
training programs.

Typical costs include training time, training content development

(whether in-house or outsourced), training evaluation time, content
delivery, lost productivity, and travel and administrative expenses, if
applicable.
CONT.
3. Select Candidates
Next, determine which employees or departments need a training
analysis. Survey employees to gain insights into their skill levels and
training desires, request feedback from managers and leaders, and
gather reviews from managers, peers, and customers to determine skill
gaps and knowledge deficiencies.

Review your findings to identify the employees or departments that

would benefit most from improved training at this time.
CONT.
4. Identify Necessary Skills
Once you’ve chosen your candidate(s), review their role and identify
the skills required for an employee to perform the job successfully.

If you’ve already conducted job analyses at your company, refer to the

documentation as it should outline, in detail, the necessary skills, tasks,
responsibilities, and qualifications for the role.
CONT.
5. Assess Skill Levels
Next, measure the employee’s current knowledge and skill level
through assessments, quizzes, and testing.

Compare the results against the required skills for the job. With this
information—along with your surveys, assessments, and reviews—
you’ll see what skill gaps and knowledge deficiencies are hindering the
role or department. Then, you can start planning a training program
that addresses it.
CONT.
6. Find The Experts
Locate subject matter experts within your company who know the ins
and outs of the training topic, and recruit them as needed to plan out
your training program. They’ll be able to give you the most recent and
useful information, which you can use to design your program and
make it as beneficial to the learner as possible.
CONT.
7. Design And Deliver Your Training
Now, it’s time to build the training program that bridges your
employee’s skill gaps and powers their performance. Your training
approach should be tailored to your employee’s preferred learning
style, their goals, the business’s goals, and your established training
methods.

Your training could include coaching or mentoring; online learning with

experiential components, micro-learning modules, and games; on-the-
job learning; books and reading materials; or conferences.
CONT.
8. Regroup, Review, Refine
As your team and business goals evolve, so should your training. After you’ve completed a training needs analysis
and the employee has finished their training program, review the outcomes and finesse your approach as needed:

How did the training analysis inform your training program development?

How did the training improve employee performance?

How was the learner’s experience, and how can it be improved?

How did the training push the company towards achieving their goals?

What is the return on investment, and how can it be improved?

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
• KSA refer to the knowledge, skills, and abilities that an employee must have to perform their responsibilities within their roles.
They’re listed in the job description and guide candidates and employers to assess the person’s chance to succeed.

Knowledge
• Topics and subjects that can be used when performing work functions when the person is hired.
Examples:
• Knowledge of accounting principles and practices
• Knowledge of budget control policies and procedures
Skills
• Technical or manual proficiencies are usually gained or learned through training. They are observable and measurable.
Examples:
• Skills in analysis and problem-solving
• Skills in using Microsoft Excel and accounting software
Abilities
• Capacity to apply knowledge and skills to perform a task. It also includes personal and social traits which are innate or acquired
without formal training.
Examples:
• Ability to process large amounts of numerical data
• Ability to prioritize work and meet deadlines
Training needs analysis levels
There are three levels of training needs analysis based on your
organization’s goals and the knowledge and skills required for goals at
each level:
1. Organizational level TNA – It determines training needs related to
performance metrics, new employee knowledge at the company-wide
level, and continuous training to optimize company performance and
productivity to achieve its goals. It’s designed to address problems and
weaknesses of the organization as well as to further improve the
company’s current competencies and strengths. More importantly, it
takes into account other factors like trends and changes in the economy,
politics, technology, and demographics.
CONT.
2. Group/job role level TNA – This type of analysis identifies specific
training needed to upskill a team, department, or business unit.
Moreover, it determines which occupational groups experience skills
gaps or discrepancies and ways to eliminate them.
3. Individual level TNA – This training needs assessment is dedicated to
an individual or individuals in a team. It is conducted in conjunction
with a project or changes that could impact each team member. It is
also used for an employee’s personal development for future career
advancement.
What is the purpose of conducting a training
needs analysis?
1. Aligning training with business goals – Alignment ensures that you’re
investing in training that will help your organization achieve its business goals.
Identifying the short and long-term objectives for your organization and the
skills needed to achieve them helps L&D professionals to focus on the scope
of the training.
2. Uncovering skills and performance gaps early on – Performance gaps occur,
for instance, when a business is undergoing change or new technologies
emerge. As such, employees need to constantly upskill to acclimate to these
changes. TNA allows organizations to resolve these gaps before they become
a major issue. However, a study by PWC pointed out that only 40% of
employers are upskilling their workers to address skills and labor shortages.
CONT.
3. Prioritizing training – A TNA will help you determine which training you need to
prioritize with respect to time and budget. “Training needs analysis is critical if you
want to ensure you don’t waste resources, time, and energy,” notes Emily Chipman,
executive coach and principal consultant at Rushman Consulting Solutions. “When
done correctly, people learn more quickly, there is a greater impact on job
performance, and it reduces the frustration that comes for employees when taking
on new roles and tasks, thereby impacting employee engagement.”
4. Planning targeted training – You can create training plans that target exactly the
skills and knowledge you identified are missing, so resources are invested properly.
5. Determining who gets trained – With TNA, you can make sure that specific people
get trained on what they need. Customizing your training program based on your
employees’ needs allows you to maximize the benefits of your training programs.
Training needs analysis best practices
1. Start with the desired outcome. Identify which activities lead to these
organizational outcomes before identifying training activities. This
outcome can be an organizational or departmental goal. Or it could be an
individual that needs improving.
2. Manage expectations. Training and training need analysis requires
advanced stakeholder management. Stakeholders include employees,
service users (or customers), educational providers who design and deliver
the program, and internal sponsors who pay for the educational event.
Ensuring that the training satisfies all groups is crucial for its success. In
other words, when a manager thinks a communication training session will
solve all their internal problems, you need to manage their expectations.
CONT.
3. Use an integrated approach. Research shows that training programs
that place new skills in a broader job or organizational perspective and
integrate them with other organizational processes and activities are
more successful. This does not mean that you cannot focus your
training on something specific, but you must place what people learn
into an organizational perspective.
How to conduct a training needs analysis
Step 1. Defining organizational goals
Usually, a (senior) management comes to the L&D team with one of these symptoms
and asks them how they can help to fix it. These problems can include:
-an organization losing its innovative lead
a sales department struggling to increase market share for a fast-growing scale-up
the board has come up with an organizational capability that every employee must
develop.
Introducing new technology or processes that employees need to be trained on
Trying to improve compliance or safety within the workplace
Wanting to develop the skills of the organization’s workforce to prepare for future
business opportunities or to stay competitive in the job market
CONT.
When we talk about organizational goals or outcomes, we focus on measurements
like:

financial performance
revenue
profit
Return on Equity
Return on Capital Employed
earning growth
share price
CONT.
Step 2. Define relevant job behaviors
Let’s say we are an L&D professional working for a large consulting
company. Currently, a small group of partners sells large-scale projects
to clients. However, in the future, all consultants will be required to sell
their services to (potential) clients. In other words, this will be a new
core competency that everyone in the organization needs to develop.

The next step is defining the appropriate job behaviors that will build
this competency to help achieve the organizational goal.
CONT.
Step 3. Define the required knowledge & skills
The relationship-building and commercial behaviors we have defined
earlier need to be specified before we can move on to a training
program. The more specific we can make these behaviors, the easier it
will be to create training programs that fulfill these behavioral
dimensions.
CONT.
Step 4. Training
The final step in the process is the training design. Here, you’ll communicate the
needed learning outcomes you defined in step 3 to the training provider(s). You
also determine a budget, scope the time investment of the training, and decide if
you will work with internal or external trainers.

Remember to consider non-training alternatives that can help develop the

required knowledge and skills. It can be the inclusion of these core competencies
in the performance management review and praising and rewarding the defined
behavior. Or you can also add them as selection criteria in the hiring process. All
these interventions will help build and reinforce the knowledge and skills.
Training needs analysis example
Training needs analysis questions
Step 1. Define organizational goals

What problems are occurring in the organization?

What is the organization trying to achieve?
Which organizational goals require the biggest change in employee
behaviors?
Which departmental goals are lagging?
Which individual performance goals should be improved?
Can these problems be solved through different behaviors?
Cont.
Step 2. Define relevant job behaviors

Which job behaviors contribute to the goals defined in step 1?

If the listed job behaviors are ‘fixed’, does that bring us closer to the
goals defined in step 1?
Do the listed job behaviors align with our organizational core values?
Which cultural cues reinforce undesirable behavior?
What other influences play a role in reinforcing undesirable behavior?
cont.
Step 3. Define the required knowledge & skills

Which skills are required to display the behaviors we defined in step 2?

Which knowledge components are required to display the behaviors we
defined in step 2?
Once the listed skills and knowledge components are taught, will the
relevant job behaviors always be displayed?
What is hindering the display of relevant job behaviors once the listed
skills and knowledge components are taught?
Cont.
Step 4. Training

Is all the information required to start the training design and

development process present?
Are there non-training alternatives that we can deploy that will have a
similar effect?
Thank you!