Employee training refers to the teaching of specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA)  to an employee. It is any effort to improve current or future employee performance by enhancing an employee’s ability to perform through learning, usually by altering the employee’s attitude or increasing his or her skills and knowledge. The need for training is determined by an employee’s performance deficiency, or a performance gap.

Training Needs Analysis

Training needs analysis has different characterizations depending on the objective of the situation.   First of all, it is the evaluation of a situation to determine whether or not training will enhance the performance of an employee or employees, or close or significantly narrow a performance gap.  Secondly, it is the assessment of the training results and training that takes place in order to remove the gap in the mastery and actual performance.  The training need is equivalent to the mastery performance minus the actual performance (Training need=Mastery performance-Actual performance).

Training needs analysis is the method of determining the organization’s training needs and determines whether the organization’s needs, objectives, and problems can be met or managed by training. Within this framework, needs analysis is a three-step practice:

1. Organizational analysis – a determination of which organizational goals can be gained through employee training and where in the organization the training is needed;
2. Task analysis – a determination of knowledge, skills, or attitudes must the employee learn in order to perform his or her job at the mastery performance level, and the content of the training; and
3. Employee analysis – a determination of which individual need training and for which knowledge, skills, or attitudes.

Training needs analysis plays a significant part in planning the use of available training and development resources. It ensures that resources are spent on essential training and development that will help move the organization toward meeting its goals and objectives. In the same manner, it can help identify occasions where training might not be the best solution to the given situation.

Conducting a training needs analysis is a vital preliminary step to training design and development and can considerably persuade the overall effectiveness of employee training programs.  It serves as the foundation for the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of the employee training program.

Summary

The existence and comprehensiveness of training needs analysis should be related to the overall effectiveness of employee training because it provides the method whereby the questions essential to successful employee training programs can be resolved. In the design and development of employee training programs, methodical efforts to assess the training needs of the organization, determine the job requirements, and determine which employees need training and the type of training to be delivered, result in more effective employee training. Training needs analysis results in the specification of the training objectives that, in turn, identifies or determines the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be trained.

By Shirley J. Caruso, M.A., Human Resource Development