Assessing Your Corporate Training Needs

To determine just what training would best serve your company’s needs take a close look at what you already have in place and what you need to accomplish--what will be the business purpose of any training you provide.

Perhaps you have to develop new skills in your work force to remain competitive or to develop the talent to support a new product. Whatever the goal, be sure you have a complete picture of the organization’s overall strategy so that whatever you eventually recommend will fit with the future direction of the company and be aligned with the existing culture. Without alignment with the strategy and the culture, training is doomed to be of little value.

Next, consider which of various training needs assessment methods would be the most effective in your environment for accurate data collection. Focus groups or general employee surveys or interviews? Once you have the data, pull it together, draw your conclusions and make your recommendations for action with the input and support of the business.

If you tie it all back to a strong business case (created with the business), you will gain the executive support you need for true behavior change and business impact.