Ever run the right program...for the wrong people?

Ever run the right program for the right people...only for them to go back into a workplace that won't let them use their new skills?

Ever get the feeling that people want different training than they need?

• If we conduct the perfect program...for the wrong people, we may be good trainers, but bad decision makers.
• If we run the perfect program for the right people, but our organization does not support, or even worse, punishes people for trying to use their new skills, we are not bad trainers, just bad decision makers.
• Would you be surprised to learn that the training most people in most organizations want is training that will take them out of their current situation into a better one, not the training that will help them perform better in their current job?  Are we really making the best decision by offering our training "cafeteria style?"

In this part of the web site, we are discussing how to identify the training needs of a group of workers — a job family or a functional area.  If you are looking for a process that clearly identifies the training needs of specific individuals, please see our discussion of Development Profiling.


With the right Needs Assessment, you get:

• A training needs assessment that gives you a consensus of what skills are Important to Job Performance.  Not just from the perspective of the job incumbents, but their managers as well.  It will tell you what skills are important at different levels and functional groups in the organization.
• A training needs assessment that gives you a consensus of which of those critical skills are in Need of Training.  Some think this is the same as what's important.  There is, and should be, significant overlap between what is important and what is in need of training.  But in some cases, especially in organizations that train well and often, people have already received extensive training in the most important skills.  In other situations, people want training in skills that aren't critical to strategy, but which are recognized or rewarded in their organization.

Without alignment of rewards and incentives, your training may succeed, but the skills will not be supported by the workplace.

• A needs assessment that gives you a consensus of what skills are actually aligned with strategy in the way the organization Rewards.  Without alignment of rewards and incentives, your training may succeed, but the skills will not be supported by the workplace when the training is over.  The answers to this question help you determine when to train, and when to wait until organizational reward and support systems are in place for the new skills.
• An assessment that tells you whether people are answering honestly or "fudging".  The Scaled Comparison cannot be unobtrusively manipulated, so decision makers are alerted to results that look plausible but can't be trusted.  The Scaled Comparison can distinguish between manipulation and simple confusion about what the questions or skills mean.
• A training tool that is a completely custom product.  It will ask the questions you want to ask, about the skills you want to study, using language your people will recognize as unique to your organization or industry.  No off-the-shelf questionnaire, or one with 10 blank spaces at the bottom to put "your" questions in. 
• An assessment that gives you readable, "no statistics necessary" reports.  Shown in these pages are samples of how the questionnaire might look, the reports that give decision makers understandable views of the results, with no jargon or numerical mumbo-jumbo.

If You Use the Scaled Comparison for Training Needs Assessment, You Can Avoid These Common Mistakes

"Wish List" Assessment - Traditional training surveys were content to ask people what training they would like to have.  The result was a sort of "wish list" from employees.  If (a big if) you were sure your employees wanted what was important, and what they needed to be trained in, then a "wish list" assessment would be perfectly adequate.

Trusting an Average Instead of a Consensus - An average is a numerical compromise between different viewpoints.  A consensus is what you would expect to emerge from face-to-face interactions between disagreeing people trying to reach a workable, acceptable outcome.  A consensus is a different kind of middle-ground position — one that the largest number of people can live with and support.

Results Inconsistent With Your Management's Philosophy - Nothing is more discouraging than finding out that what your people need is only available with an entirely different management philosophy.  Generic needs assessment surveys are good for identifying skills that work in other organizations.  The skills we use and the ways we accomplish our tasks are not independent of the values and preferences of management.  A good needs assessment should draw its conclusions in the context of the organization, not in some hypothetical unreality.

Undependable Conclusions from Unreliable Data - The most common form of questionnaire assessment (the Rating Scale) gives numerical results, but can't tell you if something goes wrong.  If people filling out the questionnaire lie, or don't understand the instructions, or collude with others to answer in some agreed-upon way, there is no way to detect it.


Show me what Training Needs Assessment looks like.

If you are interested, you can contact us and tell us about your needs and situation.  You can also click here to learn more about how we work together on a project like this. 

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