Name : nada Mohamed Ibrahim

Subject : MBA TRAINING

Dr : HANAN ABDEL MONIEM
 Training need analysis
Training needs analysis:
Training needs analysis (TNA) is a process to identify the gap between the actual and the
desired knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) in a job.

The need for such analysis usually arises due to an organizational problem. It can be a lower-
than-expected quarter for the sales team, changing technology threatening to impact the
continuity of train operators, or constantly low customer satisfaction scores forcing the
product team to be more agile and customer-focused. In all these instances, the problems can
potentially be resolved through training.
In other words, when a lack of knowledge, skills, or abilities causes the
problem, conducting a training needs analysis and subsequent training
can be a viable solution.

Conversely, training needs analysis won’t be effective if it’s broader

organizational issues that cause the problems. This may mean that
instead of a lack of knowledge, skills, or abilities, our diagnosis may
point out that sales are low because of a mismatch between the work
and the rewards. Or that customer satisfaction is low because the top-
down driven product strategy is not in line with what customers are
looking for.
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.
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.
Purpose of conducting a training needs analysis:

The purpose of training needs analysis is to identify and bridge the knowledge and skills
gaps in the workforce to achieve optimal performance. TNA also uncovers the reasons for
the gaps and helps determine the different approaches to removing those gaps.

Moreover, training needs analysis helps in:

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 those 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.

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.

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:

Here are three best practices we recommend applying when conducting a training needs
analysis:

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.

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:

When conducting a training needs analysis, it is good practice to follow a standardized process.

We will go through each of the training needs analysis process steps using an example, explain
the different elements to account for, and define what is needed to move forward to the next
step. In our example, we will assume that a training solution can fulfill an organizational need.
Step 1. Defining organizational goals:

As described earlier, a training needs analysis is always initiated by an organizational

symptom or pain point. Filip Moriau calls this ‘organizational stress’ in the context of future
skills in the video below.

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.
The pain points often also relate to new opportunities that an organization wants to get ready
for. According to Veena KV, Head of People Ops at FirstPriciples, some examples are:

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
All these challenges relate to organizational goals. If this is not the case, the challenges are
usually not worth fixing. The manager is unlikely to approach L&D for a training solution. If the
organizational goal is unclear, take your time to explore it.
Exploring it will help you diagnose the problem and training needs.
When we talk about organizational goals or outcomes, we focus on measurements like:
Financial performance
Revenue
Profit
Exploring it will help you diagnose the problem and training needs.
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
Softer outcomes can include customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and
organizational culture.
Organizational goals and outcomes are hard to influence as the entire organization
contributes to them. They are subject to influences outside employee behavior, so it’s hard
to improve them through training.
The best approach is to break the organizational goal down into a department or individual
goal (we will do this later in this article), or focus on core competencies.
Core competencies are competencies that all employees in the organization must have.
Most organizations have defined and specified what good performance on these
competencies looks like. Everyone in the organization should have a basic skill level in these
competencies. There is consensus on these core capabilities, so it is easy to define their
relevant job behaviors (step 2).

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.
Behaviors Description

Able to effectively build and maintain

Build relationships relationships with a wide range of
potential clients; staying top of mind.

Able to spot and effectively scope

Spot opportunities
opportunities when they arise.

Specify how they can solve their

Turn opportunity into a deal problem through expertise and close
the deal.
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.

As you can see, we have combined three behaviors into two behavioral groups and defined
the required skills and knowledge for each. We used a competency framework by the
Canadian Professional Sales Association for the basic skills and knowledge elements and
adapted them to consultative sales.
To complete this framework, ask employees who already have these skills. Go back to the
assignment-giver to check if these behaviors, skills, and knowledge will help achieve the
organization’s goals. The employees can say to what degree the knowledge and skills
accurately reflect the core competencies the organization needs.

The last step is to assess the current skills in the organization. Not everyone will need the
same training. For example, the partners in the consulting firm already have extensive sales
experience – they will not benefit from this training. A senior staff member will require
different training than an associate or a junior. All these details must be considered before
moving to the next stage.
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.
The first stage, Analyze, is where the training needs analysis comes in. In this phase, you:

Define instructional goals and their alignment with organizational goals,

Determine the target audience,

Recognize behavioral outcomes, and

Identify learning constraints.

All these elements are addressed in the training needs analysis process you learned about in
this article.

In the following stages, your team designs, develops, and implements learning programs.
Finally, you evaluate their effectiveness. All these stages are much easier to do well once you
complete the training needs analysis a thorough manner.
Step 5: Determine your short and long-term business objectives:

The first step in conducting a successful needs analysis training is to identify your
organization's short and long-term goals, as well as the performance required to achieve
them. This aids in concentrating on the scope of the training effort.

This step entails asking senior management, line managers and supervisors, and
employee’s high-level questions such as:

What are the objectives of the organization?

What abilities will be required to achieve those objectives?

Who in our organization will be working to achieve those objectives?

The goal of Step 1 is to zero in on what your organization wants to achieve. Collaboration
with Roundtable and the establishment of SMART Goals can be used to achieve the
desired result. Goals can be measured in terms of quality or by establishing a metric that
must be met. This step can be completed independently or with the assistance of
Roundtable's Learning Experts. This stage compels organizations to dig deep and assess
their business goals.

Step 6: Determine the Optimal Performance Outcomes:

The goal of phase 2 is to determine the best way for employees to perform their core job
functions. This step entails examining employees' responsibilities as well as the skills and
competencies required to meet the organization's business objectives.

The following are the main questions that are asked during this phase:

What are the necessary skills, knowledge, and abilities for employees to effectively perform
Will the skills and knowledge evolve in response to the needs of the business?

‍This step builds on the short and long-term goals established in step 1 and identifies the
key competencies that employees must possess in order to achieve those goals.

Step 7: Examine Current Performance Outcomes and Identify Gaps:

After defining the desired performance standards, the next step is to examine the gap
between the current and desired performance levels. This is typically accomplished through
a combination of reviewing existing performance data and collecting targeted data.
Roundtable can assist by conducting interviews with leaders and front-line employees, as
well as analyzing company metrics.
Among the questions asked during this stage are:

What significant events or critical decisions brought us to this point, and how can we improve
them?

What have we done well, and what can be improved?

The goal of this phase is to examine the gaps in order to determine whether and where skill
development can help close the gap.

Step 8: Determine and Prioritize a Solution:

After you've determined the source of the performance issue, the next step is to devise a
solution. This stage bridges the gap between analysis and action by identifying the best
possible solutions.
The end result is a report on Training Needs Analysis that recommends a specific course of
action. The goal is to first focus training efforts on the employees and skills that will make the
most of a difference, and then determine what type of training will be most effective.

The following are the main questions that will be asked during this final phase:

Where would increase knowledge and skills have the greatest impact?

What are the operational constraints of any training solution?

Based on the content and context, which modalities will be most effective?
Benefits for Your Business:

1. Identify Knowledge Gaps Before They Become A Problem:

One huge benefit of conducting training needs analysis is the fact it can help you identify
any knowledge gaps your employees may have before it becomes an issue. It’s better to
highlight a potential problem and tackle it head-on, rather than becoming aware of the
skills gap when an issue arises because of it.

The training needs analysis will allow you to take a proactive approach rather than waiting
for something to go wrong before you realize there is a problem.
2. Helps You To Plan Your Training For The Year:

Another huge benefit of training needs analysis is that it makes it much easier for you to
plan your training for the upcoming year (or whatever block of time you work with). Once
you have identified the skills gaps that exist in your business, and then all the staff
members who need additional training in certain areas, it’s easy to pull together a training
plan which will cover all these skills gaps.

Rather than trying to guess the type of training that will be most useful to your
organization, or who needs to complete the training, your training needs analysis will make
the whole task much easier, and you can be confident that the training you have selected
will make a direct impact on your business!
3. Highlights Training You May Not Have Considered:

It can be hard to sit down and plan out a training schedule for a large organization
without completing some sort of background research first. You may think that you
know the type of training your team should be completing, but training needs analysis
could actually highlight a whole load of areas that your team needs training on that you
never even considered before.

That’s why training needs analysis is so useful because it can highlight training needs
you may not have considered before and show that you need to start offering training
in different areas to ensure your staff are performing at their best.

Without the use of training needs analysis, you may never have considered a particular
area of training, which could have severely hindered your business.