Training Needs Analysis: What it is, and why you need it
Updated: July 2, 2024
Growth had created a problem for my client.
The company owned and managed apartment communities. Each community manager was responsible for training their team. They each did it their own way. Some were more effective than others.
The results were inconsistent.
My client was the vice president of operations. She asked me to design a training program for new apartment leasing managers.
The VP wanted to ensure every leasing manager received consistent training.
She was eager to get started right away. I convinced her a needs analysis was the fastest way to get results. In this article, I'll cover:
What is a training needs analysis?
Why is a training needs analysis important?
How do you conduct a training needs analysis?
What is a training needs analysis?
A training needs analysis is the process of identifying the specific training that's needed to solve a business problem and the best way to deliver it.
Imagine you wanted to build a house. You wouldn’t just buy some building supplies and start banging boards together. You’d first decide on what type of house you wanted, and then hire an architect to design it.
A needs analysis is a similar process for training programs. It helps you decide exactly what you need.
A typical needs analysis consists of three broad stages:
Communicate with sponsors to clarify goals.
Gather and analyze data.
Present conclusions and make recommendations.
Why is a training needs analysis important?
A training needs analysis gives any training program a much higher chance of success.
There are a number of benefits:
Save Time: Eliminate waste from the training process.
Improve Performance: Focus on what's needed to succeed.
Increase Consistency: Achieve more consistent results.
A needs analysis clarifies exactly what training is needed.
I helped one client reduce new hire training time for customer service reps by 50 percent. A needs analysis showed the old program spent too much time on knowledge employees rarely used, and not enough time helping new hires develop the skills they used every day.
Sometimes, training is only part of the solution.
One inbound call center added $1 million in annual revenue. The needs analysis identified that reps lacked product information about the products they sold. Providing product samples and guides in addition to sales training helped employees sell more confidently.
In some cases, training is unnecessary.
The CEO of a company I worked for once asked me to conduct customer service training to save an important contract. My needs analysis revealed the problem wasn't related to training—so we implemented a different solution and saved the contract.
A training needs analysis does not need to take a long time.
Some projects can be done in just a few hours, while even more complicated initiatives can be completed in just a few weeks.
How do you conduct a training needs analysis?
A typical needs analysis consists of three broad stages:
Communicate with sponsors to clarify goals.
Gather and analyze data.
Present conclusions and make recommendations.
Here's what that needs analysis entailed for my client, the company that owned and managed apartment communities.
Communicate with sponsors to clarify goals
Start by clarifying the training project's goals with your sponsors. This focuses your efforts and makes it easier to measure the impact of the training later on.
I worked with the vice president to set a goal as part of the needs analysis process: new leasing managers would achieve a 20 percent lease closing ratio within their first 90 days.
Only half of new hires currently achieved that mark. The overall average was 19 percent. Here were the results from the previous eight new hires:
Gather and analyze data
This stage is a bit like being a detective. You have to look in various places to find data and information that will help you crack the case.
There are often surprising discoveries as you do your analysis.
Half of new leasing managers did achieve the 20 percent goal. There was something different about their training compared to the four who fell short of the goal.
I examined a number of data sources for the apartment community needs analysis:
Interviewed new hires and managers from various locations.
Reviewed existing training materials.
Analyzed performance data from previous hires.
One discovery is that community managers were inconsistent in how they coached new leasing managers. Some were very hands on, while others spent very little time with their new employees.
The hands-on managers generally achieved much better performance.
Present conclusions and make recommendations
The needs analysis concludes when you present your findings to the project sponsor and make recommendations based on your conclusions. The goal is to gain agreement on the best way to develop the training.
The needs analysis for the apartment community made it clear that community managers needed to be more hands on. Helping them become better coaches wasn’t in the original scope of the project, but the vice president was able to make it a requirement for the new program.
That insight led to impressive results.
In our initial pilot, every new hire achieved the 20 percent goal within 90 days, and the overall average climbed 7 points, from 19 to 26 percent:
Needs Analysis Resources
My LinkedIn Learning course will help you conduct your own needs analysis.
Resource: Sponsor interview questions
The training video will walk you step-by-step through the process of conducting a training needs analysis, and it even provides you with complete sample project.
You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to watch it. Here's a short preview of the video.