A guide to training needs assessment

The process of assessing training needs for employees in any organisation is often done in a haphazard and unscientific way. The consequences are enormous, often reflected in wasted financial resources and lost time that could have been directed towards more productive activities. The challenge often emanates from a lack of understanding of what training needs assessment is and what process to follow to come up with credible results from such a process. Training needs assessment refers to a gap in the employee’s capacity that impacts negatively on their performance.

This training gap affects the employee’s capacity to deliver according to the requirements of the job both in the immediate term and in the future. Training needs analysis assessment refers to the process of identifying why an employee is failing to perform to the required standard.

The first step in a training needs assessment is to understand the business strategy of the organisation. This understanding gives context to the whole process of assessing training assessment. The same business strategy impacts the performance standards that an individual employee is required to achieve. Without this understanding, you could end up with training needs that do not support the business strategy

Step number two requires that the person doing the training needs assessment have a clear understanding of the performance standards in each job occupied by the individuals being assessed. This understanding will help you to assess the gap between what is required and what currently the incumbent employee is delivering.

The third step after having a detailed appreciation of the required performance standards is to establish if there is a performance gap. Often what people refer to as the training gap is a performance gap. Let us take an example of a business development manager whose performance standards required that they grow export revenue by 30% every year. Over the past 4 years, their performance has been averaging 20% giving a performance gap of 10%. This is not a training need, it is a performance gap. It is therefore hard for anyone to talk about training needs assessment when they have not established a performance gap first.

In step four you start asking yourself why there is a performance gap in this business development manager’s performance. At this stage, you do not know why the gap exists and any suggestion of a reason could be purely speculative on the part of the manager

At this stage, we start from the premises that we have identified a performance gap. The next question is focused on why there is a performance gap in the business development managers’ performance. Too often once the performance gap is established we rush to deploy our training assessment tools. The most common approach deployed at this stage is to ask the concerned employee to indicate what training they need for them to deliver. The assumption in this approach is that the individual employee concerned can identify the causes of their performance gap. The results too often are that the employee ends up giving the manager a wish list sometimes remotely linked to the performance gap identified. This approach to training needs assessment does not work and it will lead to the organisation wasting its resources. Surprisingly despite the glaring weaknesses in this approach to assessing training needs, it is very common in organisations.

Another training needs assessment favoured by most organisations is to ask the responsible manager to first identify training needs and proffer solutions. In some instances, the manager can hit the cause of the training gap properly and in some instances, they hit in the dark. An assessment of most of the training interventions offered to individuals seems to show that managers are not very good at identifying training needs.

The key question that must inform a training needs assessment approach is; why is there a performance gap? To answer this question correctly you would need to know what drives individual performance in the first place.

Remember these employees with performance gaps were hired when they met most of the requirements of the job especially the academic, professional and minimum experience required for the role. Therefore, what could be the sources of this performance gap when the individuals seem to meet these minimum requirements?

Decades of top-notch scientific research and evidence by top scholars such as Schmidt and Hunter has consistently laid bare the factors that drive individual performance in a job. Based on meta-analytic studies especially a study by Schmidt (2016) clearly shows the following as having the greatest influence on individual performance; General mental ability (Cognitive ability), job knowledge, personality, work Experience and education.

Excluding contextual factors, such as culture, how the person is being managed and availability of resources, an inquiry in training needs assessment must answer key questions related to the above.

Nguwi is an occupational psychologist, data scientist, speaker and managing consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a management and human resources consulting firm. — mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or websites https://www.thehumancapitalhub.com/ and www.ipcconsultants.com.