Free Custom «Training Needs Analysis» Essay Paper

For a comprehensive and effective training design, an analysis of training needs is very important. The analysis helps to establish whether there exists a discrepancy between the current performance level and the expected optimal performance. It also helps to identify the required resources, their availability and to plan on the areas where training is required. At organizational level, training need analysis emphasizes on business need with a special attention on strategic planning. A business Strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats assessment should be conducted to help the real business needs and the kind of interventions required (Burton & Merrill 1991).

In this case study, an analysis of the needs of training in team briefing is conducted. The management considers team briefing very important for an improved performance in the organization. Team briefing updates people on important emerging issues, necessitate flow of information and help people understand and connect well with the work they are doing; the outcome of all these being improved motivation on all the staff involved. Below is an outcome of a need analysis for team briefing conducted on a particular organization.

 

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An Analysis on Managers:

Analysis on this survey was done on an interview conducted on five Managers.

The interview established that an 80% of the respondents carried team briefing before while 20% has never conducted a briefing. 60% the respondents were not comfortable with the concept of team briefing. This indicates therefore most managers who carried team briefings were comfortable with it.

Table: 1

The analysis also indicates that a big number of the managers, that is, or 80% of the total number of respondents acknowledge that they need training on team briefing. The training areas they cite to need help include, answering questions, how to get participation, how to improve communication and to build self confidence among other reasons.

It is evident from this analysis that, though most managers have been conducting team briefings they still need training on the same to improve on the areas they consider to be weak in.

An Analysis on Team Leaders:

This analysis was done on questionnaires conducted on team leaders.

Table 2: Previous Team Briefing Experience

From this analysis 31.6% of the total number of respondents has never had team briefing experience before. Those who had1year and less than 1yr briefing experience were 31.6%. Most of the team leaders however had more that 1year experience with their percentage proportional standing at 36.8%. The general implication of this analysis is that most of the teams' leaders had insufficient team briefing experience, that is, the 66.2%.

Table 3: Briefing skills team leaders feel comfortable with

The study showed that only 15.8% respondents felt comfortable with all the aspects of briefing. 52.6% respondents had did not feel comfortable with all the briefing skills and thus they can not brief well. The rest, which is 31.6%, had at least a couple of briefing skill they ware comfortable with, such skills ranging from listening, leadership, presentation, handling questions, convincing, planning among others.

Table 4: Team Leaders Opinion on whether they would benefit from a particular briefing skill training or not

The general impression of this analysis is that a greater number of team leaders think they will not benefit from any of the above skills. The only area where more than half of the respondents think will benefit from is the training on briefing system in an organization which would attract 63% of respondents. Second in order would be the training on what team briefing is and the reason as to why briefing is done with an equal preference of 42.1%.

The skills which the biggest number of team leaders think would be least beneficial are the skills of asking questions and listening with 89.5% and 84.2% of the total respondents respectively, indicating the team leaders would not achieve any benefit from such skills.

Conclusion:

The severest challenge in training needs analysis is that the staff obviously out of ignorance or and misinformation often think they know what they need. To neutralize this fallacious inclination however, the analysis should focus on the need and not the perceived solution (Burton & Merrill 1991). In the case study, though most of the staff had scanty trainings on the subject before and think they may not require some important briefing trainings, their performance is bellow per, as indicated by the persisted customer complains.

Recommendation:

Recommendation on Managers

Given that a large proportion of the managers (60%) are uncomfortable with the concept of team briefing, it is appropriate for training to be conducted for them so as to equip them with this skill. To make managers confortable with team briefing, a training curriculum should be developed with focus on equipping managers with skills on how to respond to question well, promote participation of employees, communicate with other workers and develop confidence in their work. In training manager on team briefing, simulation and role playing can be used to promote the understanding of this concept.    

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Recommendation on Team leaders

With the analysis indicating that most team leaders (66.2%) lack experience in team briefing skill, it is necessary to take them through training sessions where team briefing will be taught with particular emphasis on listening, leadership, presentation, handling questions, convincing and planning skills. Training should also be conducted on the importance of asking questions and listening skills in team briefing given that most team leaders (89.5% & 84.2 %) have a negative perception on these important set of skills.