Sometimes training is just not the solution. Or, it may be part of the solution, or a follow-up to the best solution. It really just depends. Like life in general, the answer is not always black-and-white.
One thing is for sure, though: needs assessment is the first step in the
process of any training design. Or, preparing any presentation on any topic. Or even deciding how to pitch an idea at your next professional association meeting. It’s what you do instinctively when you’re assigned a new project.
You may not call it a ‘needs assessment’, but you go through the same motions regardless. When you wonder:
“what is the objective of this assignment?”
“what outcomes are expected?”
“how will behaviors change as a result?”, and
“why is this an assignment at all?” then you are asking the right needs assessment questions to answer before you can dive into your new project.
So how do you know for sure that the solution to the problem is, in fact, training? If an employee cannot perform a task, even if you put a gun to their head (apologies for this violent example), then training is the solution. When the employee simply does not know HOW to do that task - training is the solution.
If, however, she can do the task under the right conditions, but those conditions don’t exist very often, then training is not going to solve the entire problem. The problem might be a workplace design issue, a crummy supervisor, or an organizational process that needs tweaking.
Needs assessments don’t have to be long, drawn out, laborious projects. Not many organizations do them in a textbook way, and many recoil at the mere mention of the prospect. In my thirty years of work in the field of training and development, I can count on one finger how many organizational needs assessments were requested by senior leadership. (It’s important to distinguish here that I’m not referring to a training needs assessment, where training is assumed to be the solution, and the goal is to assess what types of training are needed.)
Sometimes an organization will want a class or online course to teach employees how to do X, because X is required for some good reason. Understanding sexual harassment policies, fair hiring practices, and cyber security are a few examples of classes needed to ‘check a box’. And in those
cases, those boxes are important, so no further questions need to be asked. Just get the training out there and check that box.
In other cases, a series of questions may be all that’s needed for a quick and effective needs assessment. For example, let’s say that your Chief Learning Officer was asked by the CEO to develop an online course on how to transfer customer service calls to the correct service representatives. The error rate is too high, calls are going to the wrong departments, thereby wasting a lot of time and resources re-transferring calls. Everyone is frustrated. The training needs to be quick and efficient. So, the CEO asks, how long will it take to develop and put a course out there?
A few obvious questions spring to mind, and absolutely, this is a quick-and-dirty needs assessment:
1. What is happening now with the customer calls? Can I talk to a few customer service reps to get an idea of their specific processes? Is there a ‘model employee’ who does it right each time?
2. What specifically is causing the frustration for employees? For customers?
3. What skills are needed to transfer these calls perfectly? Are these skills that the customer service reps already have?
4. What processes are in place to support these call transfers?
The answers to these questions are your initial needs assessment. By drilling into these answers and perhaps doing a cursory job-task analysis, you can determine whether training will solve this problem.
You decide to take an hour and go to the customer service desk to ask a few service reps some of these questions. They are more than happy to share their frustrations with the new automated phone system. Customers don’t understand the company “lingo” on the call message, so they press the wrong option. “Option 4 for Service Questions and Billing” is confusing. It isn’t the customer’s
fault – they just don’t know what that means. All they hear is the word “billing”, which makes total sense because we hear and comprehend the last thing that was said.
The most important part of the process is to trust your gut.
Had anyone asked the service reps before why the new system wasn’t working? Well, no, and they were not going to tell the manager. Retaliation for this type of “complaining” was swift and harsh. Oh. Well, then. The easy fix is to change the voice system message and wait for the error rates to improve. Addressing the issue with the retaliatory and problematic manager is a bonus.
The most important part of the process is to trust your gut. And trust the process.
When you suspect a solution to the problem, even if it may be challenging to implement or unpopular, go ahead and trust it. Then validate it to be sure. And then communicate it. To not do so is a disservice to you, employees, customers, and the entire organization.
And from this starting point, everything else will fall into place.