Needs Assessment

C. Hall Jones & Associates, Inc., conducts needs assessments on an as-required basis as arranged with the client. Some projects require a full needs assessment process, some projects require an abbreviated needs assessment process, and some projects require little or no needs assessment.

A training needs assessment is conducted primarily to identify which individual and/or organizational need(s) may be successfully addressed through education and training courses or activities to improve employee safety, effectiveness, efficiency, and/or productivity.

The focus is placed on needs as opposed to desires. The need may be improving safety, effectiveness, efficiency and/or productivity, or the need may be addressing a deficiency. Needs assessment helps both the organization and the training designer to specifically identify the training need or performance deficiency.

Needs assessments are conducted for one or more of three primary reasons:

• to pinpoint if training will make a difference in safety and/or productivity and/or the bottom line
   
• to decide what specific training each employee and/or each group needs to improve their job performance
   
• to differentiate between the need for training and other organizational issues

A needs assessment is conducted to answer five questions:

1. Why conduct a needs assessment? A needs assessment is conducted to tie the performance deficiency to a business need and to be sure that the benefits of conducting the training are greater than the problems being caused by the performance deficiency. Determining needs versus wants and conducting a feasibility analysis are both part of this process.
    
2. How can the performance deficiency be remedied? The proper solution may be training or it may be some other type of intervention. A needs assessment will determine if the performance deficiency can be effectively and efficiently addressed by a training intervention.
    
3. What is the best way to proceed? There is virtually always a preferred method of proceeding to best accomplish the desired task(s) and obtain the best results. Job performance standards may be established by the organization, by industry standard operating procedures, and/or by government regulations.
    
4. If training is the prescribed solution, who should be involved in the training? The training must include all of the parties required to solve the identified deficiency including (as required) organizational leadership, management, and the intended recipients of the training.
    
5. When will the training occur? There may be a best time to deliver training. The time frame may be affected by attendance concerns based on business cycles, holidays, etc.

The needs assessment process includes some or all of the following 12 steps:

1. Confirm the issues and the audience. This step will establish the purpose of the needs assessment process. The purpose may be a legal requirement, a company requirement, or simply to help to define and to improve the general knowledge of the situation. Is this a new issue for the audience? Is this a new issue for the organization? Is there universal agreement up the organizational leadership and management chain that this issue or audience needs to be addressed? The risks include the potential for having unknown stakeholders, political barriers, content gaps, and a lack of individual and/or organizational support.
    
2. Establish the planning team. This step will establish the planning team and also determine the resources that are available including time, financial resources, the number of individuals required, prior research and/or prior studies done on the topic, and the expertise of the researchers. The team should consist of members from all of the different stakeholder groups as well as members with expertise in research. Are the stakeholders and the partners new or well known? How geographically or organizationally dispersed is the team? Is there expertise within the team? The risks include not instilling ownership in the final product, communication problems, and expending time without generating results.
    
3. Establish the goals and the objectives. This step will confirm the first two steps and will establish the goals and objectives. The three phases included in this step are: a) identify the optimum or the desired levels of knowledge and/or skill; b) identify the cause(s) of the lack of knowledge and/or skill; and c) devise a solution or a series of solutions. Caution must be taken to ensure that the goals and objectives drive the outcomes. Are the goals widely shared by the audience? Are the objectives measurable? Will the project be considered a success if the objectives are met? The risks include the potential for different priorities from different team members or supporting organizations causing people to disengage from the process, not knowing if the goals and objectives have actually been achieved, and maintaining long term support for the needs assessment process.
    
4. Characterize the audience. This step will determine the following audience characteristics: a) the number of individuals present (i.e. the sample size); b) the current skill and knowledge level; c) the current educational level; d) the organizational niche; e) the cultural characteristics and possible biases for and/or against training; f) other relevant attitudes and biases; g) the ability to access and/or to attend training; and h) the ability to provide, purchase, and/or otherwise access the training course or program. How long have the individuals worked with the audience? How much variation is there within the audience? The risks include making assumptions that backfire and using stereotypes that may not be valid.
    
5. Conduct the information and literature search and review. This step will review available information and literature regarding the issue by looking at studies from leadership, managementpublic records, strategic plans, reports, articles, and academic research. Surveys, individual interviews, and group interviews are often used to clarify and/or answer questions that have surfaced throughout this process. Has the audience and/or the issue been surveyed in the past? What other kinds of reports would shed light on the audience and/or the issue? The risks include relying on results that may be outdated, wasting time and effort conducting activities that have been done before, and not knowing about information that would make the job easier and/or better.
    
6. Select the data collection method(s). This step determines how the data will be collected. Common methodologies include surveys and individual and/or group interviews. Have all the acceptable methods been considered? Do the audience characteristics provide insight into what methods they would be most receptive to? How much expertise is there in-house? The risks include upsetting the audience and inexperience which results in more time being required for the design and analysis and possibly less concrete results.
    
7. Determine the sampling scheme. A sample should always include more data points than are believed to be required. The biggest threat to a survey is that the results are inaccurate because the sample size was not representative of the population. What is statistically recommended? What is the population size of the audience? The biggest risk is that the results may be invalid due to the sample size being too small.
    
8. Design and pilot the collection instrument. The most common methods are questionnaires, individual interviews, group interviews, observations, focus groups, oral surveys, analyzing existing data, and statistical tests. If a questionnaire is designed, developed and used, it must be pilot tested. The more data that is collected, the more reliable the results will be, but better data requires more time, money, and resources. How will the questionnaire be piloted? What kind of expertise does the planning team have relevant to the survey process? How important is a high level of statistical precision? How will the data collection process be standardized? The risks include an unclear questionnaire, gathering unnecessary data, an unreceptive survey audience, and the potential for irritating the respondents.
    
9. Gather, record, and report the data. There are various strategies for increasing the survey response rate. The primary consideration is ensuring the anonymity of the respondents. Can untrained personnel be used to gather the data? Can volunteers be used to gather the data? Is the desired response rate being achieved? The risks include biased data, the use of poorly understood language, vocabulary issues, and conducting an invalid study.
    
10. Analyze the data. The findings and the interpretation of the findings should always be kept separate in the report. How much statistical analysis should be done? Is the gap or the deficiency best addressed through training? Will the data analyst(s) and the data gatherer(s) be the same person(s)? What statistical test(s), if any, will be performed? How will non-responses to individual survey items be handled? The risks include under satisfying or overwhelming the audience with the report, missing trends or patterns, not accounting for other possible critical barriers, and letting personal biases and opinions inadvertently enter into the process.
     
11. Manage the data. This step involves determining how the data will be organized and archived. The importance of this step is very often not recognized until it is too late. Will the data ever need to be referred to again? Will the raw data be retained? How will the data be stored? If the needs assessment is contracted out, who owns the data? The risks include unforeseen requirements that would necessitate that the data be needed again and not be available.
     
12. Synthesize the data and create the final report. The goals and objectives should always be addressed in the synthesis. The report must include problems and/or errors that were identified with the design and/or the implementation of the survey. An executive summary is often helpful. Who is the audience of the final report? Did the final report address the objectives? The risks are decision makers not understanding the process and/or the results and not satisfactorily addressing the stated goals.