Needs Assessment for Strategic Plan

60 TD | September 2016

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

ASSESS NEEDS FIRST,

The response to a training request is not as simple as yes or no.

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Y ou are walking down the hall in your organi- zation minding your own business when you run into a department manager. You greet

each other and chat for a moment, and then the manager says, “You know, I’m having some trouble with my customer satisfaction measures in the call center. They seem to be in a decline. The phone representatives must not be as responsive to the customers as they should. Would you set up a tele- phone skills training session next Tuesday?”

Your first instinct would probably be to say, “Yes, certainly. What time?” But why would you agree so readily? Perhaps you believe:

• You have an excellent telephone skills program that you have been wanting to pilot test, and this would be your chance to do so.

• The HRD field is a helping profession that reso- nates for you, and this is an opportunity to help.

• You are an excellent trainer, and this is a chance to shine.

• You want to be responsive to your clients and build a reputation of responsiveness. After all, that’s your job, isn’t it?

• This manager has a reputation for being de- manding and no-nonsense—the only answer this manager is looking for is “yes,” and that means a lot of pressure.

So, which option would you choose? Maybe all of the above? These issues exist for training profes- sionals every time they have a conversation like this in the hall or when a manager asks them to stop by to talk about a training need. It’s hard not to say yes immediately with these pressures.

ASSESS NEEDS FIRST, TRAIN SECOND BY BETH D. MCGOLDRICK AND DEBORAH D. TOBEY

podcast

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62 TD | September 2016

Now look at the other side of the coin. Why wouldn’t the best response be, “Yes, certainly. What time?”

• You don’t know how this problem (low customer satisfaction measures) fits into this manager’s overall business strategy. (You could end up solving a problem that isn’t very important.)

• You don’t know what the customer satis- faction numbers are or what they should be. (There is no business goal to focus on.)

• You don’t know what factors other than the phone representatives’ job perfor- mance might be contributing to the decline in customer satisfaction measures. (It might not be a training problem at all.)

• You don’t know what the phone represen- tatives are doing wrong. (You might not hit on the skills they need when you de- liver your course.)

• You don’t know if the telephone skills course you have matches with what the representatives are doing wrong. (You might train them in skills they already know and miss the skills they need.)

• You don’t know how the phone represen- tatives feel about their job performance or the prospect of participating in tele- phone skills training. (You could insult them by teaching things they already know and thereby create or contribute to a morale issue.)

• You don’t know what kind of learning environment would be most conducive to the phone representatives’ needs as learners. (You could end up delivering a course that’s too easy, too challenging, too active, too inactive, too intimidating, or too uncomfortable and thereby im- pede their learning.)

If you think that all the reasons listed are valid, you’re on the right track. It can be dif- ficult not to give the client an immediate yes, but your short-term gains from being per- ceived as responsive will be outweighed by the long-term risk of not adding value or hav- ing a positive impact on the client’s business. Instead, this is when you need to have a train- ing-needs conversation with the client. In this

Step 1. Conduct an External and Organization Scan

Step 2. Collect Data to Identify Business Needs

• Capitalize on an opportunity • Resolve a problem • Support a strategy

Step 3. Collect Data to Identify Performance, Learning, and Learner Needs

• Required performance • Learners’ current performance • Required skills and knowledge • Learners’ current skills and

knowledge • Learner needs

Step 4. Analyze Data • Identify key data: gaps in perfor-

mance, skills, and knowledge • Identify recommendations

Step 5. Identify Potential Training Solution

• Needed job aids and performance support materials

• Types of training methods • Types of training delivery

Step 6. Deliver Data Analysis Feedback

• Training recommendations: design and delivery; ROI or ROE forecast

• Nontraining recommendations: work environment, rewards, consequences, work processes

Transition Step: Begin Training Design

The Training Needs Assessment Process

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conversation, you will more than likely say, “Yes, and …” rather than simply “Yes.”

The initial client conversation The needs assessor’s first challenge is to step backward in the process and place the training request in the context of the business needs (see the training needs assessment process on page 62). You must guide the conversation away from identifying a training plan (step 5), where the client started, to a more appropri- ate focus on the second step in the process: collecting data to identify the business needs. By focusing on the business need, you can ex- press the training need in the context of those business needs.

The initial conversation you conduct with your client provides some indicators regard- ing the client’s needs, setting you on the data-collection trail. This conversation has multiple goals:

• to identify the client’s perceptions of the need that triggered the client to make the training request

• to place that need in the context of the business by identifying the client’s busi- ness needs and how the need is linked to the overarching business needs

• to identify the client’s perception of any employee performance needs inherent in the situation

• to identify the client’s perception of what the intended training initiatives should address

• to identify the client’s perception of the employees’ needs as learning participants

• to set the stage for the possibility that there might be training-related and non- training-related issues contributing to the client’s need

• to gain permission and support for a needs assessment data-collection effort to en- sure the training will resolve the business and performance needs

• to establish a reasonable timeframe for the potential training deliverables.

Each set of information provides direction for your data-collection efforts in the needs assessment process.

Acting on a hunch Should you play out a hunch during this ini- tial conversation? For example, what if a client says that training in a certain skill is needed for a group of employees, but your background and experience tell you that the desired training won’t resolve the problem at hand? You immediately form an intuitive guess—a hunch—that other resolutions will be more effective than the solution the client has chosen.

Hunches are good things; they occur be- cause you have seen patterns, trends, and common cause-and-effect relationships dur- ing your experience in needs assessment and training. Many times—if not most of the time— your hunches are correct.

But, it is still not the right time to act on them. Although the client doesn’t have any data at this point to prove her argument, nei- ther do you. Postulating or speculating about solutions that differ from the client’s expecta- tions at this time only causes tension. Instead, negotiate to gather data to determine the real cause, which might prove your hunch correct. When the time comes, the data will convince the client.

There are a few other questions you may wish to ask during your initial conversation with the client. You could ask about the possibility of conducting a training needs assessment to collect more information regarding this train- ing initiative. You could request access to data sources, such as organizational data collected in the client’s department and other depart- ments (for example, customer service or the HR and quality improvement departments), man- agers of the targeted employees, the targeted employees themselves, aggregate performance appraisal data and trends on the targeted em- ployees, exemplary employees, and subject matter experts.

HOW YOU HANDLE THE INITIAL CONVERSATION WITH A POTENTIAL CLIENT ABOUT A POTENTIAL TRAINING PLAN IS CRITICAL.

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Business Needs • What current business needs or strategies are being affected or perhaps caused by the assumed problem?

• What business problems exist? (Look for such measures as amount of increase or decrease in busi- ness indicators, including sales, waste, customer satisfaction, turnover, grievances, productivity, quality, and complaints.)

• What is going on in the external environment that is related to this problem (for example, competition, market changes, and government regulations)?

• What other data exist (that your business unit already collects) that may provide information regarding this business need (such as sales, productivity, quality, HR information, benchmarking, and so forth)?

• What change(s) in these business indicators are you seeking to achieve with this training plan? What measures will tell you that you have been successful?

• What business opportunities are inherent in this business need (for example, new markets or new products)?

• What business strategies are you seeking to support with this requested training initiative? • What’s happening in your business that shouldn’t be happening? • What’s not happening in your business that should be happening?

Performance Needs • What results should employees be achieving? What is their current level of achievement? • What should people be doing differently? • What should they stop, start, or keep doing? • What does perfect performance look like? What does current performance look like? • Is anyone performing those skills correctly now? How many people are doing it correctly versus how

many are not? • What is the cost to the business of doing it incorrectly? • Is this problem important enough to the organization to do something about it? • What else might be getting in the way of employees performing as they should, other than lack of skills

and knowledge (nontraining issues)? • What will the nature of management support be for job application and practice after training?

Learning Needs • What knowledge and skills do you think the targeted employees need to learn to perform the way they should?

• How important is each knowledge item and skill that you have listed? • How well should the targeted employees be performing the skills by the end of the training? • Is anyone performing those skills now? • How well are they performing? Are they meeting business goals?

Learner Needs • What are the targeted learners’ backgrounds and experience in this subject matter? • What is their job environment like (fast paced, stressful, routine)? • What are the expectations regarding when and how they will attend the training (during work, after

hours, paid, unpaid)? • What technology do the learners have access to? • How durable does the course need to be? (Does it need to exist for one-time use, a month, a year, or

ongoing?) • What access to course documents do learners need before, during, and after the course? (Does there

need to be a reference manual, job aids, performance support, or a knowledge management database?)

Questions to Ask Your Client During an Initial Client Discussion to Trigger Data Collection

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Building credibility Will every client respond positively and collab- oratively to the questioning suggested here? Probably not. Many organizations and manag- ers view the training professional as a training provider—someone who simply delivers train- ing as requested by the clients and has a limited role in the organization’s performance issues. The first time you try to change this perception with a particular client by having a conversation about the needs underlying the training request, you might be met with sur- prise, impatience, or annoyance.

There will be clients who are willing to consider all aspects of what is causing the per- formance issue. When you ask for permission for your needs assessment, they will gladly give it to uncover the real cause of the prob- lem. With this client, you simply enhance your value as a business partner and consultant by conducting a thorough and effective training needs assessment.

There will be other times when clients force you to prove that your approach works—they will not be giving you the benefit of the doubt. You will simply have to say yes to a perceived training need and then find ways to build aspects of the needs assessment into the de- livery of the training.

At the end of the project, when you give your clients your evaluation report, tell them that you were able to tailor the training to meet their business needs because you built in some needs assessment work as you were develop- ing the training materials. They may be intrigued and ask for more information on how you were able to get your information. You can then share

some of the tactics you used to find out what was affecting the desired performance, and show the clients how you weaved that information into the training design to help them meet their business goals. As you begin building credibility with those clients, you’ll be able to add needs assessments to future training projects and con- tinue to help them meet their business goals.

You are working toward the goal of being a trusted business partner. You may have to start out as a training order taker and then begin building credibility with your clients by including some needs assessment through your instructional design and interviews with subject matter experts. This will move you to the role of training professional.

As you build more credibility by providing solutions that help the business improve, you will be afforded more flexibility to include more needs assessment methods in your process. Eventually you will become a performance con- sultant with business partners relying on your expertise and methods to help them come to the right solutions that solve the business needs.

Dealing with nontraining issues Do you always have to fulfill a client’s training request? How can you maintain your credibil- ity if your hunches, the data, your background, and your experience all indicate that the prob- lem is not a skill deficiency and, therefore, not a training issue? Will you still have to deliver a training solution? The answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no.

If you were given permission to conduct a needs assessment, then the client is probably at least somewhat willing to explore other possibilities. Once you have gathered and an- alyzed your data and the indicators are clear, you should be able to convince these clients, especially if you have good recommenda- tions regarding the nontraining issues you have identified (and if you still deliver some type of training solution as part of the plan).

On the other hand, you will have some cli- ents who are so convinced that training is the only solution that they cannot be persuaded otherwise—at least not until the training plan is delivered and the evidence that it was not a

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training issue is irrefutable. With these clients, conducting a needs assessment is difficult, if not impossible. Sometimes the best answer is something like: “Yes, I can deliver the telephone skills training next Tuesday, and I would also like to use some of the session to gather infor- mation about what else might be contributing to the decline in customer satisfaction figures.”

Then you can deliver both the training pro- gram and the value-added needs assessment activities that you propose. This tactic might not secure permission for your needs assess- ment on the project, but it will build credibility for the next interaction with that client.

How you handle the initial conversation with a potential client about a potential train- ing plan is critical in shaping how you deliver

your services to that client and how useful your services will be to the client’s business goals. This initial conversation also influences your future relationship with that client and your credibility as a training professional.

Beth D. McGoldrick is an instructional designer for RiverSource Insurance, part of Ameriprise Financial, where she has won awards for training projects she de- signed and developed; [email protected].

Deborah D. Tobey is the director of talent manage- ment for the Tennessee State Department of Safety and Homeland Security, and an adjunct senior lecturer at Vanderbilt University; [email protected].

This article was excerpted from chapter 2 of Needs Assessment Basics, 2nd edition (ATD Press).

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