Nuts and Bolts: Needs Assessment Basics

In looking over past “Nuts and Bolts” columns I realized Ihaven’t done much with the basics of needs assessment, a.k.a. what to do when amanager calls and says something like, “My people aren’t motivated. We needsome teambuilding training.”

A few more questions

Aside from basic questions,try a few of these less-typical questions to help you get a better picture ofthe problem:

• Where are the workers who make up the targetaudience?
• Tell me about their typical day.
• Do theythink they need this training? Now?
• Help me understand why you think training is thesolution for this. What will training do?
• What organizational factors might becontributing to the problem?
• What training already exists? What training havethe learners already had?
• What else will we need, besides training, tosolve this problem?
• What incentives will workers have to completethis training? Are they motivated to do this?
• What incentives will managers have to ensurethat members of the target audience complete the training?
• What access will I have to workers in the targetaudience now for activities like assessments?
  What if we don’t train them? What will happen?
• How will you know when the problem has goneaway?

And:

• How does this tie in to our business goals?
• How will the training be reinforced when it’sover?

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Try, when you can, to get theperspectives of different people involved. Here are my notes, made at the time,on stakeholder information for a project from some years back, about whatseemed like a straightforward request from HR for training in theorganizations’ discipline policy. Despite existing training, the HR directorreported an increase in employee grievances and lawsuits and asked for anupdated course.

HRand upper management are concerned about costs and bad publicity associatedwith lost grievances. Acknowledges that current training is not working. Feelsexisting training needs to be expanded to cover details of policy in moredepth.

Thetarget audience, middle management and supervisors, is largely unaware of theincrease in grievances, and issues with costs do not directly affect them. Theythink that the policy is too intricate and that training offered has been onlyin the form of presenting details about policy, not application to realisticsituations. Class reaction sheets consistently report that materials used in existingtraining are overwhelming and too detailed, that the course is too lecture-orientedand “boring,” and that it does not reflect reality of workplace situations andconstraints on supervisors. Existing training is viewed as a waste of theirtime, and they are not amenable to more of that.

Thereis stress between management and the human resources office: Management feelsthat the human resources office is not providing enough support and meaningfulinformation about effective use of the policy.

In-housesubject matter experts (HR staff) reluctantly provide face-to-face training,but have no experience with instructional design and thus regard training onlyas presentation of material.

Front-lineworkers—ultimately the usual ones on the receiving end of the policy itself—getan overview in new hire orientation. They report that the policy in general iscapriciously employed and varies from manager to manager. Anecdotes repeatedlymention the managers who let things go for a long time, then suddenly “throwthe book at” a worker, managers in one work area who are far more likely totake formal disciplinary action than managers in adjoining areas, and managerswho take action against one worker while ignoring the same problem with anotherworker.

Beware analysis paralysis

One more thing: Be careful of analysis paralysis. The needsassessment phase is important, but is notorious for expanding to fill allavailable time. Remember, in addition to determining actual need you still mayneed to do task, job, skill, learner, and technology analyses, too. Movequickly, manage conversations, and set realistic but firm deadlines forgathering information.

Finally? Negotiation skills

Every semester I’m contacted by students enrolled ininstructional design programs who’ve been tasked with interviewing someoneworking in the field. Every now and then I hear from a textbook author needinga “Social 101” tutorial. One thing I’ve started telling them both: If there’sone thing IDers need to learn more about, it’s learning how to say , “No,” or,at least, “Let’s talk about something that might get you a better solution.”

What if, in the course of conducting a needs assessment, youfind that the problem simply does not suggest a training solution? Providingthe wrong solution in response to a request is a version of winning the battlebut losing the war: the training department gets the business and seemsresponsive, but, ultimately, someone will say, “Well, we tried training but itdidn’t work” or, worse, “The training department did this for us but it didn’thelp at all.” It is a disservice to the client and a blow to the trainingprofession’s credibility.

But how to say, “No” to a boss, or even your boss? Remember,managers, even those who are insisting on training, really are asking to get aproblem solved. Showing how that can be done, and being part of that bettersolution, will ultimately enhance both training’s and your reputation. Whilethere may be times you simply must follow orders, work to position the trainingfunction as a partner in performance improvement, not just the deliverer of onetype of intervention.

Want more?

See “When Training Works” for my best quick-and-dirty needs analysis tool.

Also, it’s 30 years old, but one of my favorite needsassessment resources is Zemke and Kramlinger’s Figuring Things Out (Basic Books), complete with a section called“giving bad news.”

Some material adapted from my book From Analysis to Evaluation: Tips, Tools,and Techniques for Trainers (Wiley, 2008).