Sandy, a L&D business partner with a foreign bank, was approached by a telemarketing team leader to conduct a training on cross-selling skills for his team members who apparently were unable to meet their sale targets every month.
Instead of quickly arranging a training course on cross-selling skills, she decided to do a proper training needs analysis (TNA). Through her diagnostics, she found that the lack of products understanding was the key issue. She promptly worked with the trainer to introduce the products lessons, followed by cross-selling skills training for the telemarketing team. The relevant training reaped positive results!
Without a TNA, this may not have been so successful. Why was it necessary for her to do one?
To Understand Specific Needs
A TNA can be used to help uncover the underlying issues to underperformance, and identify the relevant course of action. If training is required, it will ensure that it meets the needs of the business, and prevent the use of training that would not provide any positive value.
To Identify Skill Gaps
What do the employees know, and what do they need to know? The gaps between their existing knowledge and the required level of competency can be discovered, and it will determine whether training can address that gap.
To Ensure Return on Investment
As conducting training sessions will incur financial costs, as well as take up valuable amounts of time, it is important to ensure that it is really the best solution to the problem. Use a TNA to evaluate whether other ways might deliver a higher return on investment.
To Determine the Type of Training
How the training is to be delivered should also be addressed. Can everything be learned in a 2 hour session? Or does it need to be spread across a span of a few weeks or months? Should it be face-to-face, or online? A TNA will help determine which method will fulfil all the organisation’s requirements.
To Manage Expectations
If needs are not analysed well, it will be hard to figure out whether the training was truly effective or not. A TNA can help to identify training objectives and expected outcomes, so that the evaluation of the training and employee performance can be more easily measured.