How to Assess What Training Your Employees Need

This training needs assessment works best in small to mid-sized organizations. It will give you a quick assessment of the training needs of an employee group. It helps find common training needs for a group of employees.

Difficulty: Average Time Required: Approximately 1-2 hours

Here's How:

1. Gather all employees who have the same job in a conference room with a white board or flip charts and markers.
2. Before the meeting ask each employee to write down their ten most important training needs. Write specifics, like disciplining an employee when late or communication with other management.
3. Then during the meeting, ask each person to list their ten training needs. As they list the training needs, you capture the needs on the white board or flip chart. Make a tick mark when there is a duplicate need, some may seem a little different, but may be the same underneath the surface.
4. When all training needs have been listed, use a weighted voting process to prioritize the training needs across the group. In a weighted voting process, you use sticky dots or numbers written in magic marker to vote on and prioritize the list of training needs. Assign a large dot 25 points and smaller dots five points each. Distribute as many dots as you like. Tell needs assessment participants to place their dots on the chart to vote on their priorities.
5. List the training needs in order of importance, with the number of points assigned as votes determining priority, as determined by the sticky dot voting process. Make sure you have notes (best taken by someone on their laptop while the process is underway) or the flip chart pages to maintain a record of the training needs assessment session.
6. Take time, or schedule another session, to brainstorm the needed outcomes or goals from the first 3-5 training sessions identified in the needs assessment process. This will help as you seek and schedule training to meet the employees' needs.

Note the number one or two needs of each employee, that may not have become the priorities for the group. Try to build that training opportunity into the employee's performance development plan.

Tips: Training Needs Assessment can be, and often needs to be, much more complicated than this. But, this is a terrific process for a simple training needs assessment.
Make sure you keep the commitments generated by the training needs assessment process. Employees will expect to receive their key identified training needs met.

To discuss your employees needs call Innovative Leadership at 609-390-2830 or email us at info@innovativeleadershipdv.com

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Funding Cutbacks Curb Achievement

Some of the new barometers for Training and Development in 2010 are starting to show signs of improvement. It sounds like we can expect to see old times again for training and development shortly. But I still feel that businesses sense the pressure of the economy. In my travels, I have not heard that many companies have opened up their training budgets. The economy certainly plays a major part of the decision making process to fund employee training. Most companies have reduced their workforce while also reducing or eliminating resources that provide learning opportunities like meetings, courses, etc.

Funding these programs and realizing the fact that training and development can often makes the difference between companies who are the industry leaders and others who are on a lower tier of success.

What has all this reduction in training and learning opportunities done for your workforce? The 2009-2010 U.S. Strategic Rewards Survey reported that employee engagement levels for key personnel dropped almost 25% as a result of restructuring, and employee benefit cutbacks, including professional development and training, indicating a significant slump in employee morale and productivity!

In most of the companies, a reduction in the workforce usually elevates the workload of the remaining staff while adding stress and frustration to those having to put in the extra time. Companies are put in position where they must start focusing on their key employees and start developing a Talent Management process that will enable them to retain their top producers and hopefully develop their high potentials. It certainly is a vicious cycle that creates a revolving door to top talent when the economy comes back.

Are you prepared for the exodus?

Leadership in business today needs to focus on their current staff and analyze their talent needs for the future. Funding for training compared to losing a key employee to the competition is nominal. The same is true compared to losing a high potential staff member that will be needed in the future. It is important that companies realize that people are applying for a position that leads to a better future and they feel it is the company’s responsibility to provide the opportunity for a career. Talent management is key to the future of all businesses and the funding for people development should never take a backseat to anything else.


Richard Hohmann
Senior Consultant
Innovative Leadership Business Consultation
Phone: 609.390.2830
E-mail: rhohmann@innovativeleadershipdv.com
Website: www.ILDV.org

Do you have the right focus?

It seems like the HR professional must continue the fight for training and development since it does not appear that the CEO has realized the value of training to the company or organization.

Companies focus on profits, stock prices, and performance, but not on employees. How do we forget to see the value in our people, particularly our key employees, when it comes to celebrating our business outcomes? Studies have shown that companies that invest more heavily in training and development have been more successful in achieving their defined outcomes.

Many of the recent studies have concluded that a more engaged workforce provides enhanced performance and improved productivity. Companies with a more engaged workforce seldom have morale issues. “In the 21st century, our natural resource is our people – and their potential is untapped and vast. Skills will unlock that potential.” (Leitch Review, December 2006) Even with the economic climate of the past year or two, it has been demonstrated that training expenditures were a strong predictor of stock prices.

So where is the hidden agenda? Is any CEO really interested in the productivity and developing the potential of their people or is the real objective of only reducing cost associated with people including the people themselves. I have seen a decrease in revenue of less than 10%, yet the company has reduced its labor forces by almost 30%.

Training the management of any organization will certainly prove to make the organization more effective. People are looking for advancement and an opportunity to develop skills to assist with their upward mobility. They want feedback immediately from their supervisor and they want to work in an environment that supports their development. The social culture that is presented today by companies is very important to the millennial generation. Many believe that a budget for employee development indicates whether a company is in it for the long haul or not.

If we expect to retain our top producers in the management positions, we better make sure that they have the skills and competencies to work with four generations of workers. This ensures that knowledge is shared, cross-training is completed and the work is getting done in a timely fashion. We need to teach our management team that communication is the key to people success and that success can only be achieved if we develop people’s potential and focus on productivity and performance, and not just trying to reduce costs. Reducing training budgets can be detrimental.

We are fortunate that the economy has kept the Baby Boomers in the workforce but how long will that last? It looks like we will be left with an untrained workforce that doesn’t like to communicate with others. It sure sounds like it might not be the best time to be in a management position.

Come on Mr. CEO; listen to your People Developer. Investing in your management team will produce an improved bottom line. If you don’t believe that training and development can affect the bottom line, just look at how the reduction in their training budget prepared Wachovia for the merger with Wells Fargo. Their training budget was reduced by over 50% and their stock fell as much as 95% before the bank finally agreed to the merge. Helping people reach their potential, coupled with effective processes and procedures can certainly affect the effectiveness of the organization.

The time to train is now and please pass this on to the decision makers in your company!