Why is Training Need Assessment (TNA) important?
Training is the process of acquiring newer competencies to adapt to changing needs of the market. Training must therefore always have a practical intent. Rarely does someone walk into a job with all the skills, knowledge and attributes required to perform his/her function optimally, from day one? Often some sort of induction training is required even for the most knowledgeable workers.
However just drawing up a training calendar and setting aside a budget is not enough. To kick-start the exercise, you first need to identify the gap areas and that’s where TNI comes into the picture.
EasyHR’s Training Needs Identification (TNI) blog will give you rich and detailed insights on how to identify learning and development needs of your employees across the board. It will help you identify specific development gaps at each career stage, as they align with your departmental or organizational objectives.
Countless research done in the past proves that executives who receive the right training are more productive, efficient, and satisfied with their work experience, than those who don’t. Here’s a brief overview of three different needs managers should look at and three assessment methods for identifying key training needs at any organization.
Domain-specific needs
These are quite self-specific, but even these can be narrowed down to form the basis of your annual training program. Bespoke, tailored training is always an outcome of an effective, well-designed TNI program, and will eventually determine your organization’s place in the industry.
Job-specific needs
This TNI exercise will help improve the final output of the job itself. It may involve an error-free familiarization with a tech device; bug identification for a software; or on how to close a deal with a well-informed customer that may not be everybody’s cup of tea. The key is to identify which functional aspects of a job belong to which career profile and assigning on-the-job training, accordingly.
Task-specific needs
This is a subset of a job family. For TNI relating to specific tasks, you need to first break-down all the job responsibilities into smaller components – say, telephone etiquettes, database maintenance and product knowledge etc. for a sales executive – in order to ensure that your executive is finally accomplished at all these individual tasks.
How to Assess? The TNI Process
At the organizational level, this should be a detailed and exhaustive exercise to identify discrepancies, bridge gaps, and study factors like a new tax regime, a new environmental law or the changing workforce demographics. Such assessments would help you determine what are the gap areas and how can these be addressed with tailored programs.
Detailed job and skill analyses are using in drawing up inventory questionnaires with which key training needs can be identified. Enterprises undergoing restructuring, merger or acquisition, launching a new product or entering a new market can greatly benefit from this TNI assessment.
If you want to provide superior training, start by making a checklist that addresses the direct needs of the employees.
How to identify training needs?
In order to fully understand all your training requirements, you should:
Revisit your business objectives- any training that you conduct must align you’re your primary business goal
Ask for staff suggestions- find out what do they want and have to have it delivered to them, as a flexi-program, a week-end program etc.
Carry out a full-scale skill audit– Some of your executives may have latent skills that you had no inkling off. Perhaps you can engage them to cross-trade their skills for something else.
The idea is to eventually be able to build your own internal skill pool, rather than always having to fall back on an army of highly-paid external consultants. .
Finally, remember that training is an investment in your business. A scientifically-conducted, process-driven TNA should help you draw the maximum mileage and RoI from this investment. Done in a studied manner with the use of appropriate tools, TNI could be the right fix for any skill gap.
