Training Needs Assessment - An Important First Step Before Starting a Training

October, 2020

To understand training and development, it is important to understand a background

In order to keep growing in terms of revenue and profits in a continuously changing environment, a company needs competent employees.

In order to ensure there are no gaps in the competence of employees, companies impart training to employees.

In order to ensure that the expense incurred by the company is indeed well-spent, the task of TNA needs to be carried out. TNA is training needs assessment.

TNA can help us answer the following questions:

1. Is training required at all?


2. If there are any performance gaps (due to which training is being thought about), what are the reasons for those performance gaps?


3. On what aspects is training to be done?


4. Which specific employees of the company people should be trained?


5. At the end of the training, what specific competencies should participants have acquired?


6. How will you evaluate whether the training has been successful?
   Often, the company may experience specific performance gaps, due to which it might think of conducting a training program. However, before actually conducting a training program, it is important to conduct TRAINING NEEDS ASSESSMENT (often called TNA).

Components Of Training Needs Analysis:

1. Organization Analysis


2. Task Analysis


3. Person Analysis

Let us see this in detail.

1.Organization Analysis – The purpose of Organization Analysis is to find out if any organisational factors are responsible for the performance gaps. In organisational analysis, the reasons for the performance gaps are found out, and the organisation checks if any of these relate to the organisation itself. Thus, some of the organizational factors which could be causing the performance gap could be:

a.Organizational strategy
b.Specific organisational policies
c.Specific decisions made by the organization

2.Task Analysis – The purpose of Task Analysis is to find out if the performance gaps are being caused by the way any specific task is being performed. So, if any aspect of the performance of the task is causing the performance gaps, then that is covered in Task Analysis. 3.Person Analysis – The aspect of person analysis deals with competence of employees. Person analysis tries to find out if any possible incompetence of employees is causing the performance gaps.

Actions Taken Based On Training Needs Analysis:

It is important to note that if training is being carried out to eliminate performance gaps of the company, then, those organizational performance gaps can be eliminated through only if these gaps are caused by possible incompetence of employees. Training cannot help if the organizational performance gaps are caused by either organizational factors or by task factors.

Let us study this with an example:

Take the example of a company manufacturing and marketing juices in tetra-Pack packaging. The company finds that at the retail outlets, the tetra packs are leaking, and the juice is dripping out. It wants to urgently correct this problem. One section of the company feels that the leakage of juice from tetra-packs is due to incorrect method of the packing machine by the machine operators. This section feels that suitable training for the machine operators will solve the problem

So, the performance gap is the leaking of juice from tetra packs. After discussing this issue with experts, some possible reasons for this could be:

• Poor quality of raw material of the tetra-packs (ORGANIZATIONAL FACTOR)


• Incorrect method of storage of the tetra-packs in the distribution chain (TASK FACTOR)


• Incorrect process followed in sealing the tetra-pack (TASK FACTOR)


• Incompatibility of the tetra-pack material with the juice (ORGANIZATIONAL FACTOR)


• The concerned machine operator not knowing how to correctly operate the machine for sealing the tetra packs (PERSON FACTORS)

So, imparting training to the machine operator can eliminate the leakages of the tetra-packs is arising due to the concerned machine operator not knowing how to correctly operate the machine for sealing the tetra packs.

Thus, before deciding to train the machine operators, it is important to understand the reason for the leaking of juice from the tetra packs. This is an example of TRAINING NEEDS ANALYSIS.

 

Pravin Narang,
Assistant Professor,
DR V N BRIMS, Thane

 

Also read : SELF-MOTIVATION – A JOURNEY WITHIN

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