Needs Assessment prototype for Graphicstock.com

www.Graphicstock.com

My goal here is to provide a window into how I would go about conducting a needs assessment which would drive a training program.

Stakeholders to seek buy-in from:

GraphicStock customers who have an account—church website developers, personal websites, blog sites
GraphicsStock graphic designers and/or graphic contributors
GraphicStock photographers and/or photo contributors
GraphicsStock web design team
GraphicsStock blog writers
GraphicsStock support team (IT department)

Questions to ask during each phase

Organizational -- Is there a consensus among the management that training is needed? Where does training fit in the budget?  What did you spend on training last year? What resources do you currently have at your disposal? Are you out-sourcing any of your training; if so, what is it?

Person --   For Management: What level of understand are you requiring from your employees: introductory, intermediate, advanced?  Who needs the training? Are there any performance issues to address?  For the employees: Do you feel anything is missing as it relates to your continued development? 

Task Analysis -- What are the duties and tasks completed on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? Assuming they do in house training: What are the goals and learning objectives for each course provided?  Outsourcing training: Do you have the course goals and learning objectives? 

Documents/Records

Vision for the company, mission statement for the company 

Goals for each section

Information identifying in-house and/or outsourcing training

Mandatory and optional training

Techniques to Utilize for Information Gathering

Questionnaires for the customers to determine if they are receiving the products GraphicStock indicates they provide.
Interviews with management, individually and as a group to determine what is perceived as needing training
Focus groups – Web design team, blog writers; in-house graphic designers and photographers ---provide opportunity to collectively identify training gaps by documenting duties and tasks


As you can see, an effective needs assessment takes looking into the entire organization, understanding the goals and vision, who the customers are, and how organization does business. In addition, identifying gaps in existing training (even if comes from outsourcing), and then providing a report that brings everyone on board to develop a new training program.

Reference

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6^th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Stolovitch, H. D. (2011). Telling ain't training: updated, expanded, and enhanced, 2^nd edition. American Society for Training and Development.

The Truth About Training--It's Not Only In the Classroom

Here's a hypothetical elevator speech to convince a supervisor that training is still an important asset in the organization.

Mike let’s talk training. Be honest, are you an expert with the Microsoft Office Suite, or do you know all the ins-and-outs with the passport software application, and do you have the time to spare to help your folks when they need it?  

Training doesn’t always occur in the classroom.  Effective training also occurs in informal settings, while still influencing employee performance improvement (Matthew, 2103).  We help you make your job easier; we ensure we are in line with your office vision and effort.

How about job aids, eLearning videos, or one-on-one time. We can individualize based on you or your employee’s needs, focus specifically on the need at hand, chunk the information into bite size morsels with less impact to the daily mission (Neal & Hainlen, 2012).

We take the time to become the experts with the software and develop methods to enable your folks to immediately apply what they’ve learned.

Consider this, the cost when Joe asks John how to do something in MS Word after struggling himself, taking John away from his work, in reality, both are taken from their work. Top that, with the realization of the bad habits Joe picks up from John, costing even more time, and money.

Think about it.

Click below to see the link to the audio file

Truth About Training Elevator Speech









Reference

Matthews, P. (2013). Informal learning at work: How to boost performance in tough times. Milton Keynes: Three Faces Publishing.

Neal, B., Hainlen, L., & American Society for Training and Development. (2012). Designing for informal learning. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.