You may be tempted to survey employees to ask about their training needs. Don't.

Asking employees what training they need is like asking young kids what they want for dinner. An enthusiastic answer doesn't mean that's what they need.

I once worked with a payroll department that was struggling to serve its internal customers. They frequently couldn't process payroll on time and made many errors. The team was denied a request for additional staff so they asked me for time management training.

It turned out they really needed a better process. 

We worked together to map the existing process, identify bottlenecks, and implement a new workflow. Productivity immediately improved by 25 percent and errors went down to nearly 0.

No training required.

This won't always be the case. Employees often need training to help them do their jobs. Unfortunately, asking them what training they need will often yield what they think they need, not what they actually need.

Here's a better way to ask employees about training needs.

How to assess employee training needs

The biggest mistake managers make when assessing training needs is to assume employees need training. There are many cases, like that payroll department, where another solution is needed. In other situations, employees need less training or training on different skills than you originally thought.

There are a few steps you should take before asking employees about training.

Step 1: Identify business goals

The purpose of training is to help employees develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to do their jobs or a task more effectively. Start the training discussion by thinking about a problem you're trying to solve, such as improving customer service, reducing complaints, or using a new piece of equipment. Resources are limited, so we want to focus our training investments on areas of business need.

Step 2: Identify success drivers

The next step is to identify the key drivers that contribute to that goal. For example, Palo Alto Software decided to focus on customer retention.

In an interview with Celeste Peterson, a Customer Advocacy Supervisor, Peterson described three key drivers of customer retention:

• Customers logged in to the software more than once in the first week they signed up.

• Customers were able to easily access help when they're confused or frustrated.

• Customers understood the value of paying for a full year of service upfront.

Customers who cancelled their subscription were more likely to have experienced a problem in one or more of those areas.

Step 3: Determine key behaviors

Once you identify what drives success, determine what employee behaviors lead to good results with your key drivers. This step usually involves observing your employees work or having discussions about what’s working and what’s not. (Notice you’re not discussing training just yet.)

When in doubt, I always look for a Betty. A Betty is that successful employee who figured out a great way to do things. I call this employee Betty because that was the name of the employee who taught me the concept.

Palo Alto Software determined that its customer advocates (customer service reps) needed to do two things in particular:

• Provide helpful support to guide new customers through the account setup process.

• Use positive phrasing when customers are confused about annual billing.

Once you know what your employees need to do, it’s finally time to assess employee training needs.

 

Training Needs Analysis Questions to Ask Employees

Once you've identified what employees should be doing the next step is to find out what employees are actually doing.

The best way to do this is to observe employees in action. Here is when you can ask a few questions:

• What do you do now?

• Why do you do it that way? (If it's different than expected.)

• What's preventing you from achieving your goals?

For instance, Peterson observed her team at Palo Alto Software to see how they handled situations where a customer complained about billing issues. Many customers signed up for annual billing to get a discount, but didn't realize they would be charged for a year's worth of service upfront.

In the past, customer advocates would offer to refund the charge and convert the customer's account into a monthly one.

This seemed like a customer-friendly, low-friction approach but it was actually costing customers money in the long run since monthly accounts billed at a higher rate than annual subscriptions. Monthly customers were also more likely to cancel.

This observation revealed a simple training need—customer advocates needed to learn a better approach to handle complaints about annual billing.

Here's how Peterson described the new approach she trained her team to use:

"Now, rather than immediately addressing their confusion and apologizing, giving a negative impression, we empathize, and focus on the positive, that the annual subscription provides the benefit of a 40% discount by collecting for 12 months in advance. We also let the customer know that we're happy to convert it to the monthly option or cancel and refund if they prefer, since we have a 60 day money back guarantee."

Notice Peterson used data analysis, employee observations, and dialogue with her team to identify this very specific training need. No surveys were involved.

There is a case for surveys when there's a larger audience.

For example, I worked with a client where 700 people will need training on the organization's customer service vision. In this case, the survey is a convenient way to ask people for their current understanding of the vision so the training can be tailored to their specific knowledge gap.

 

Conclusion

Asking the right questions up front made a huge difference at Palo Alto Software. These questions were focused on what employees needed to do their jobs, not what training they wanted.

Peterson's employees may have asked for customer service training if she simply asked what training they wanted. That might have resulted in a half-day training class on serving angry customers or having each person take my one-hour Working With Upset Customers course on LinkedIn Learning.

Doing an upfront needs analysis allowed Peterson to make a bigger impact by offering very limited training on a specific technique for a particular situation.

You can learn more about assessing employee training needs by taking my Needs Analysis course on LinkedIn Learning.