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.