6 Training Needs Analysis Tips For Every Instructional Designer
As an Instructional Designer, training needs analysis can be a great way to give you the information you need to create the best training content possible for your internal training needs.
Rather than creating general training courses to try and cover a vast number of topics, you can use the data gathered during a training needs analysis to establish the specific content your business needs to close all the knowledge gaps in its team.
Let’s take a look at some tips to help you get the most out of the training needs analysis process.
1. Make Sure You’re On The Same Page With The Management
When it comes time to start designing a new training course for internal training purposes, it’s important to take some time and sit down with your management team to ensure you are all on the same page.
Once a training needs analysis has been conducted, management will have a very clear idea of the skills they expect their team members to have, and the skills which are currently missing due to knowledge gaps. Your job is to create training which will fill in these knowledge gaps and ensure all the staff members are brought up to the same expected level.
Taking a little time to plan at the beginning will ensure that you know exactly which skills they want you to target in the training content, and which skills need to be prioritized over others. This can also help you understand which skills connect together, and therefore would work well being covered at the same time during a training module.
2. Target Content Around Desired Skills
As we said above, it’s important to ensure that the training content you are creating is targeted around the skills which the management has determined each employee needs to have. It’s important that you focus on these skills and create insightful content around them to ensure employees are brought up to speed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Don’t dilute information about the skills with lots of other information, as this could be confusing or lead to the team members not learning as much as they need to about a particular skill.
3. Don’t Cover Old Ground
A significant part of a training needs analysis should also be the one when you see what topics team members are already knowledgeable about and, therefore, don’t need any additional training on. It’s important to consider this when creating your training material, as you don’t want to waste lots of time and effort creating content which is going over topics and information which staff are already familiar with.
This may also lead to staff disengaging from the training if they think they already know all about a topic, when in fact, there is vital information mixed in which they need to pay attention to and retain.
Don’t go back over topics which don’t need to be touched upon. Assume the learner has the appropriate knowledge on those topics as the training needs analysis has shown, and simply focus on the new information you want them to learn instead.
4. Change Delivery Methods To Suit Topic
While you may be given a large number of training design requests after a training needs analysis has been completed, it’s important not to treat every request the same way. Even though they are all connected in that they are essential skills that employees need to have, the skills could be wildly different and focus on different departments or roles within the business.
That’s why it’s important to think of each skill individually and think about the delivery method which would suit each skill best. Consider who is the desired learner for each topic, and how the training will fit into their day-to-day roles. Perhaps, classroom-based sessions will work better for some teams, whereas other teams who are busier or maybe work different shift patterns will prefer eLearning that they can get on within their own time.
5. Schedule Regular Check-Ups With Management
It’s vital to ensure that you schedule regular check-ups with your management team throughout the training creation process. This will allow both parties to ensure that they are still happy with the direction the training is taking, and it will make sure that the finished result will meet everyone’s expectations.
This is a much better approach than plowing ahead and finishing all the training without any feedback, as you may miss the mark on the desired skill and have to start again!
Keeping everyone in the loop along the process is an excellent way to ensure the training needs analysis data is used to its full potential and that you are creating the best training material possible.
6. Follow Up To Ensure The Training Was Successful
Once your training materials have been designed and used throughout the company, it’s important to follow up with the relevant people to find out whether the training was a success on not.
Managers and team leaders should be able to measure the effects of the training on their employees to ensure it has brought them up to company standards and has closed any skills gaps they may have had.
If there are still gaps in the training, you may need to go back to the drawing board and rework the training content for future training sessions to ensure they are entirely successful in the future.
