I've identified in my CPD plan that I'm not really aware of the different tools and techniques for conducting a Training Needs (or Learning Needs) Analysis in an organisation. I've done one before by interviewing the senior management team, asking my HR Director, and surveying employees, then looking at the strategy to see what skills we need for the future. However, I've been making it up as I go along! Imagine I'm new to your HR department...could you please explain to me how you do a TNA? Thanks!!
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Hi all, happy to throw in my two penneth...
I help to manage a field marketing team of around 150, and we have to keep a close eye on performance, competence and training needs across the country. I'd echo some thoughts above by saying that it's a pretty hard job to complete a TNA without understand the objective or expected standard.
From a functional perspective, it's quite simple now we have set Job Performance Standards for each role in the business. For example a field sales role has 9 specific performance standards/competencies within the job description. Each employee gets accompanied in their role on a monthly basis and is given a red, amber, green mark against each competency (there is a process in place to remove as much subjectivity as possible). You can give a score of 1, 2 or 3 to match the RAG. Take each performance standards, for example "Influencing Customers" and you'll get an average of between 1 and 3 across your team. You can then identify which parts of the role are performing (or not!), see trends across the year and hopefully see a spike after each training intervention.
The above helps see training needs en masse. The interviews and regular structured and documented conversations will form a massive part of identifying individual needs, as individuals can often be missed out when creating averages and trends across a large workforce.
I've not managed big enough teams to worry about how creating an average result from the TNA interviews and surveys could miss the mark and neglect the individual. I'll bear that in mind for the future (global domination pending you see).
Thanks Dave. Great comment.
Very welcome.
Of course once you've done all that work, you then have the small matter of actually training and developing them all!
Well, what you need is a brilliant training provider to help and support you; one with CIPD approved status, excellent levels of support, an excellent and highly interactive online community full or relevant resources and experts at your fingertips, and.... me to help the on-boarding process go smoothly! DPG it is then!
:-)
Hi Celia,
Great question and I'm hoping a good discussion will follow. This is a really important topic.
I like what you're already doing. I like the idea of interviews for TNA. I think you get so much more than you bargained for as the conversation flows. I also think strategy is important to consider given how development lines into how we deliver strategy. I can understand how you feel with making it up as you go along. I felt like that too and had been working in L&D for a while before I did a CIPD qualification. One of the nice things about the qualification for me was that confirmation that my approach was along the right lines whilst also picking up some new stuff too.
A great starting place I think with TNA is the old 'start with the end in mind'. I think there's a lot of mileage in starting with the evaluation first. It's good conversations around, what are we setting out to achieve, what impact are we hoping to have on performance, what needs to be different, what does good look like. If you can design what the success criteria look like first, then it's often easier to work backwards to figure out what the journey looks like. Some of the best pieces of work I can think of followed this process and worked really well. Performance measures often achieved and higher levels of engagement from those involved.
Performance consultants springs to mind here.