Organizations and talent development (TD) professionals use needs assessments to examine the gaps between current situations and desired business results.

Let’s examine the ins and outs of this vital tool.

What Is a Needs Assessment?

Gus Presta, in a September 2018 CTDO magazine article, described a needs assessment as “a study of the gap between an organization’s desired state and its current state. When done correctly, it challenges assumptions and broadens the discussion to include data and divergent perspectives, group and individual biases, better decision making, inclusion, and better, faster business results.”

A needs assessment determines what kind of solution is needed to gain the desired results. Without it, TD professionals risk creating training programs that do not solve an organization’s business or performance improvement problems.

What Are the Steps to Needs Assessment?

According to Deborah D. Tobey and Beth McGoldrick in Needs Assessment Basics, 2nd Edition, the seven steps in training needs assessment are:

Step 1. Conduct an External and Internal Organizational Scan

Scanning the internal and external environment and gathering information from different sources, such as newspapers, current events, annual reports, financial statements, customer service data, strategic plans, benchmarking, and the breakroom, ensures that your assessment is thorough.

Step 2. Collect Data to Identify Business Needs

Current organizational needs usually fall into three categories:

• An opportunity that must be capitalized upon (for example, a new product or market)

• A problem that must be resolved (for example, customer complaints, poor product quality, or absenteeism)

• A business strategy that must be supported (for example, a marketing and product approach that caters to a certain age group)

Step 3. Collect Data to Identify Performance, Learning, and Learner Needs

Multiple sources of data must be addressed to identify desired and current job performance, desired and current skill and knowledge level, and learner needs. Each set of needs will likely include needs based on employees’ lack of knowledge or skills (which can be addressed by training) and needs that are affected by other factors that require nontraining solutions.

Step 4. Analyze Data

Data analysis yields key information that identifies the gaps between desired and current job performance as well as between desired and current knowledge and skill levels so that the ultimate training design will target those gaps. Understanding the magnitude of these gaps also assists the needs assessor in assigning priorities to the various issues that must be addressed.

Step 5. Identify Potential Training Solutions

At this point in the process, potential training initiatives have usually been identified by either the needs assessor or the client. Sometimes the needs assessors will approach their clients to share discoveries, and sometimes the clients make the first move.

Step 6. Deliver Data Analysis Feedback

The needs assessor makes a presentation or generates a report for the client detailing data analysis, training recommendations for design and delivery, and nontraining recommendations (recommendations to resolve issues that are not caused by knowledge or skill deficiencies). This is a crucial step because gaining buy-in is critical when it comes to proving the importance of a needs assessment. A 2018 ATD whitepaper found that only 56 percent of organizations conduct needs assessments.

Step 7: Transition—Begin Training Design Process

This is where the process moves into design. If the needs assessment has been done properly, then the instructional designer will have the information needed to produce targeted learning objectives, learning activities, job-relevant content and materials to support activities, measurement and evaluation tools, and a learning environment.

It is critical that any training initiative undertaken be directly linked to the business needs of the organization. If not, value is not added.

How Is a Needs Assessment Conducted?

What needs assessment techniques do you use to gain the assessment results?

Needs Assessment Basics, 2nd Edition maps out the data collection methods, which are either qualitative or quantitative. Quantitative methods—surveys, assessments and tests, and job task analysis—are those that result in hard data, which are objective and measurable, whether stated in terms of frequency, percentage, proportion, or time.

Qualitative measures—interviews, critical incident interviews, focus groups, and observation—yield soft data, which are more intangible, anecdotal, personal, and subjective, such as opinions, attitudes, assumptions, feelings, values, and desires.

Quantitative and qualitative data are both important to the needs assessment process and would work well here. For example, knowing how job performers feel (qualitative measure) about a skill will be just as important in the ultimate training design as knowing how well (quantitative measure) they perform it.

Benefits of a Needs Assessment

The primary benefits of conducting a needs assessment, according to Ashley Chaisson’s Needs Assessment Toolkit, include:

• Informs decision makers of identified gaps

• Facilitates decision making and allows you to prioritize solutions

• Provides data to justify proposed solutions, such as methods for measuring success

• Allows for reflection on previous decisions, current methods, lessons learned, and so on

Quick Tips

• Don’t assume that what worked in the past will work now. Get out of your comfort zone and be open to change.

• Use an ideal vision as the underlying basis for planning.

• Differentiate between ends and means (focus on what before how).

• Prepare objectives—including ideal vision and mission objectives—that have measures of how you will know when you have arrived (mission statement and success criteria).

• Define “need” as a gap in results (not as insufficient levels of resources, means, or methods).

For a more in-depth view of needs assessment, check out Needs Assessment Basics, 2nd Edition.