Training needs Analysis methodology–Successful job performance

If you have a lot of new and old employees and you are expecting the best performance from them, one of the answers is TRAINING. Do not expect them to perform well if you have not trained them COMPLETELY by your department pertaining to the job she/he needs to do.

Training is not always the answer for better job and productivity performances as well as helping employees attain company goals/objectives. In this case, you need to do training need analysis. In this analysis you need to do some sort of interviews, surveys and examination on your employees pertaining to these following core areas:

1.) Job performance problem
2.) Level of technology used by your company preventing them to be efficient and productive on their job.
3.) Issues on company policies affecting their work and needs.

Training needs analysis is an important step that you should do before conducting any types of training methods effective for your employees. The following illustrates the methodology and analysis result summary of sample training needs analysis:

Job Performance Problem:

Job Title: Manufacturing Engineers
Average number of years working in the company: 2
Number of engineers examined: 6
Job performance problem – According to series of test conducted, the company engineers appears to be seriously lacking in knowledge pertaining to this key areas:

1.) Mastery in MS Excel.
2.) Lacking mastery in statistical analysis.
3.) Problems managing his time on a daily basis.
4.) Slow in creating yield reports using MS PowerPoint.

Level of Technology used:

It is also revealed that:
1.) The company purchased advanced software for engineering analysis and statistical computation but the engineer does not know how to use it properly.
2.) The engineers supposed to be working closely with manufacturing technicians. However, since they do not know how to operate the machines, they can hardly suggest for better ways to improve operator/technician performance.

Issues on company policies affecting their work and needs

Company policies are also affecting manufacturing engineers to perform their job properly such as:

1.) Frequent work overtimes and even engineers are force to work overtime on a daily basis.
2.) Several reported violations on company policies by the engineers; it means that they have not completely understood the company handbook.

The above are sample summary of the overall training needs and result analysis. By having this set of data are important because it can help your employees to be successful in their job. Now determine if those problems can be answered by training the employees or suggest other ways to resolve their issues (such as a company policy change).

Important note on the above methods: Instead of providing questionnaire and letting them answer the training needs analysis, it would be much better if you spend time actually evaluating their job performance rather than providing a questionnaire. Sometimes employees will not tell the truth and may not be willing to be trained. It is management responsibility to find the most accurate method in assessing a training needs analysis that actually reflects job performance.