Hello Mr. Prashant..
Training needs analysis (TNA) is an effective way to identify any gap between the skills your business needs and those your employees have. It involves gathering information to identify areas where your employees could improve their performance. You can use employee surveys, management observations, customer comments, company meetings and inspections to collect this information.
A TNA can help you clarify your objectives in training your staff. This is invaluable for ensuring that money is spent on training that will help your business to achieve its objectives.
To carry out a TNA, you need to:
• analyse your business goals and the skills required to meet these goals
• determine whether you are changing your products or business processes and what information or training employees will need to be effective in their job
• evaluate who you want to train and how best to reach them
• establish how employees will best accept and integrate training and their preferred learning method - for more information about learning methods, see the page in this guide on training methods that suit your people
• evaluate the training in place and decide what your company can and can't provide in the way of in-house training, funding and time
• assess which consultants or training providers can fill in these gaps
• take a decision on which type of training fits your needs best - for more information see the page in this guide on training methods to fit your business
Keeping your company operating like a well-oiled machine is not an easy task, especially if your business has a high turnover rates, such as retail. In order to reduce the amount of time it takes to train your new employees to reach their full potential, you need to develop a training system that is streamed-lined, effective, and efficient and gives your new employees the skills needed to be a good employee without overburdening them with too much information. Finding the balance between too much and too little information is the key to designing the most effective training system for your company.
Step One: Determine what training is needed.
The first step in designing a training system for your company is to determine what kinds of training is needed. You will need to conduct an organizational analysis, a task analysis, and a person analysis. This three-tiered examination of your company’s training needs is required to identify: factors that will inhibit and aid training, to identify tasks that most employees will need to be trained in, and to identify employees that need to be trained.
Organizational Analysis
An organizational analysis is used to identify company factors that can negatively or positively impact the effectiveness of a training program. These factors include such things as money available for training programs, personpower analysis and planning resources, employee relations and attitudes, and company resources available for training purposes.
Examples:
1. The amount of money that is allocated to training will most likely be based on your company’s turnover rate, the difficulty of the jobs performed, and the amount of cash flow that your company has. Companies that have high employee turnover rates will probably not want to spend a lot of money on training because the employees usually don’t stay very long after the training period, and therefor it is a waste of money to invest a great deal of time and money on training certain employees.
2. Timing and personnel climate also can have a major impact on the effectiveness of a training program. For instance if a company has recently undergone a reorganization where many people were laid-off or displaced, and the company has not given its employees raises or promotions in several years, implementing a new training program may not be the best investment of company resources. Employees in this situation may harbor hostile feelings towards the company and management, and may not be receptive to new training. Instead, it would be a better investment to allocate money to improving employee relations and morale.
Task Analysis
A task analysis is a process of identifying what skills and activities need to be taught. To generate a list of skills that employees need to learn you can conduct a job analysis. A job analysis is basically just an examination of a job and a listing of the "minimum" duties and skills that are required to successfully perform the job.
Example:
Job Title:
Secretary
Job Skills:
Typing 55-65 w.p.m.
10-key
Word processing
General computer skills
Operation of office machines
Phone skills
Spread sheet skills
Filing
As you can see, this list is very basic, and generalized to the skills required of just about any secretarial position. While the secretary that holds this position may perform many other tasks during the course of a week, these are the minimum skills that are needed to be able to "successfully" function in this position.
After identifying what tasks are involved in each job, the next step is to identify what tasks need training. If an employee already has an identified skill it is a waste of money to train them in that skill. If you identify a skill that does require additional training then you will need to formally identify it as a training objective in writing. This objective should identify (1) what the skill is, (2) how the trainee is to learn the skill, and (3) how proficient they need to be in the skill after the training process is completed. This documentation is needed to not only to let employees know what is expected of them, but also for personnel to maintain a common standard of training for all employees, and to protect you against lawsuits if you need to discipline or terminate an employee for not meeting the standards set out by the objectives.
Person Analysis
The final step in determining what training is needed is to conduct a person analysis. A person analysis is the identification of people in your company that need training. There are many ways that this identification process can be handled. First an examination of past and current performance appraisals can be made to identify employees that have areas that need improvements. Surveys can also be used to identify skills that the employees themselves think that they should have or that they need to have to perform their jobs more successfully. Interviewing employees can also be used to identify skills that are needed or desired by employees, as can skill and knowledge tests. The final way a person analysis can be conducted is to evaluate and review critical incident reports that have been filed in personnel. These incidents can pinpoint specific skills like customer service, assembly, etc. that specific employees or departments need to improve.
Step Two: Determine what training approach to use.
After you have identified who needs to be trained in what areas, you will need to determine what training methodology to use. Today there are many options managers and business owners can exercise to train their employees.
Seminars are a popular choice for large-scale training issues like professional standards updates and customer service issues. The benefits of this type of training methodology are: that they are usually given by an expert or organization that has extended knowledge of the area, they cover all the issues related to the issue is a short period of time, training materials are provided, and employees enjoy the fact that they get out of work to attend the seminar. The drawbacks of seminars are based on the time and money that they require. Employees are away from their jobs for one or more days to attend the seminar so the company must either do without their services during this time or pay for a temporary replacement. In addition to losing money for missed work, the company also has to pay for the seminar, travel, lodging, and meals while the employee is at the seminar. Another drawback to this type of training is that the material is presented to all employees at the same pace and in the same manner. This methodology does not take into consideration different learning styles or paces of individual employees, and therefore some employees may be bored while others may feel overwhelmed by the amount of material being presented to them in a short period of time.
In order to overcome pacing issues of training materials, programmed instruction can be used to deliver training materials. Programmed instruction is basically a hard copy format of training that is delivered either through: step-by-step booklets, latent ink booklets, or through computer-assisted instruction or computer-based training. All of these formats allow employees to progress at their own pace, and to go back over material as many times as needed. The drawback to this type of training methodology is the costs associated with purchasing training materials for every employee, especially if the company has a high turnover rate.
Examining case studies is another training methodology that can be used. Employee meetings can be held in which critical incidents are reviewed and alternative solutions or actions can be discussed. The advantages of this type of training methodology are that the issues addressed are specific to the company, and that employees can see the connection between a skill and its result easier in this situation than they can in a made up example printed in a training booklet. The main drawback to this methodology is that employees may feel singled out if the case study is about them. To overcome this, you may need to word the case study in a manner that gives the employee anonymity and that changes the situation enough so it can not be attributed to a specific employee.
I hope the information would be useful for all
Silky Sharma
Always Wishing Good for You...