Training is an essential component of business growth and development. With rapidly evolving technologies and constantly changing market trends, employees need to upgrade their skills and knowledge to keep up with the demands of the industry.

Yet, not all businesses invest in training their workers, which causes underperforming operations due to the employees’ lack of knowledge. That’s when the Needs Analysis comes in.

This systematic process helps organizations identify employees' skills and knowledge gaps and determine the training needed to bridge those breaches.

Businesses ensure that their training programs are tailored to meet the organization's specific needs and that the investment made in training is targeted and effective.

Read on to learn how to use a Needs Analysis Template for your company!

The need analysis is a training program based on finding training gaps in a business’s employees. The idea is to identify and train workers so the company can succeed.

The training analysis is carried out by management staff and partners throughout all business departments. It’s a learning process that allows companies to boost core competencies according to company goals.

Each employee has different performance gaps that are explored in the training plan. This skill gaps analysis is an assessment tool for project managers to find learning solutions and improve company resources.

Your business needs to identify problematic areas and set a course of action with clear steps.

The only way to do that is to have a Needs analysis assessment that shows your staff’s skills gaps. This tool will show the training needed and prevent you from wasting company resources.

As a result, you have free assets to use in the business goals.

Here are the benefits of using this document as a task analysis and problem-solving skills tool to improve job performance.

• The gap analysis makes the business aware of its flaws
• Provides a more productive structure to work on employee skills
• Identifies training priorities to help the team work better as a unit
• It makes it easier to organize information
• Managers can develop an employee training program accurately

There are different levels of Need Analysis. This will depend on what you’re looking to assess. For example, organizational, operational, and individual.

Let’s break them down:

Organizational Analysis

This analysis studies the organization and its goals to determine the type of training needed. To identify gaps, you need concrete data such as:

• Possible training plans
• Employees knowledge
• Workers required skills
• Business direction

It’s the only way to develop effective training programs at an organizational level according to project needs.

To gather data for this formal process, you need to ask questions like:

• Which department is underperforming?
• What training activities should the company address?
• Is staff training enough to benefit the company?
• How is the business unit going to evolve after training recommendations?

The organizational analysis tries to notice when a department or company’s system malfunctions. As a result, managers will use it to solve performance issues with free training and other strategies to reach the desired outcome.

For example, the sales team isn’t getting enough qualified leads. Hence, they’re not closing deals. Managers – or the lead team member – must address this and check with a Needs analysis why the current skills and tools aren’t enough to reach the target audience.

After identifying the issues, they can set strategies to improve performance and meet organizational goals.

Operational Analysis

The operational analysis aims to evaluate the organization’s current performance compared to the employees' skill set.

The analysis helps consider:

• Job descriptions
• Soft skills
• Overall knowledge
• Employee experience

Once the assessment is completed, you can see if the skills required for the project go according to your expectations when you identify areas people cover without job requirements.

Let’s prepare a scenario:

The IT department is underperforming. You must develop a new website, and the ETA should be shorter. As such, you start looking at each employee's job description and compare it with expected performance.

You also ask analysis questions to individual employees, such as:

• How is their performance?
• Are they interested in learning new skills?

You can also ask:

• What is the expected performance in the department?
• Are the operational problems that are hindering performance?

After collecting and analyzing responses, you can determine how the department performs compared to previous metrics. You can decide whether to conduct training or find new hires.

Individual Analysis

Instead of studying a business unit, you evaluate a single person. You aim to find workers’ performance references based on previous and current behaviors.

You can prepare individual tests and reviews to see how employees work, if they are committed, or any pain points they may have.

Support employees and focus on finding ways to help them while calming stakeholders.

Ask questions like:

• Do current employees have the right skills and knowledge to meet future expectations?
• Do employees have room for improvement based on new opportunities?
• What is preventing employees from meeting objectives and task expectations?
• What is the best training you could prepare to improve your workforce?

The needs analysis frequency varies according to the company and its goals. It also considers your business’s struggle with current employees.

Let’s consider three scenarios with growth opportunities where your company could lose resources without the proper training needs analysis.

Starting a New Workplace

Adapting to a new working environment can be frustrating. There is new technology, managers create new working rules, meet new teams, etc.

As a result, you could see multiple employees underperforming due to a specific pain point. You must prepare a need analysis that helps determine why they are struggling.

Conduct surveys with questions about the skills needed, skills gaps, and progress required to meet a market potential. The importance of these inquiries is that they are the first step to analyzing and determining the educational requirements your employees need for development.

Problems With Time Management

Time management is one of the areas that need improvement in a business. With so many instant communication tools like Slack, Teams, Jira, etc. there is a need for education about how workers use their time.

Understanding their lack is how you ensure they excel training when releasing a Need analysis.

Lack of Engagement During Working Hours

Due to remote work and modern solutions, employees struggle to engage – or reengage – in the workplace. Anxiety, stress, and depression are killing employees’ concentration and will to do the job.

This directly affects customer satisfaction and other operations where workers are involved. So, you can use needs analysis to get insight and discover your staff's challenges and how to help them.

You can design a complete train focused on re-building company support while providing mental health support.

When creating a needs analysis, there are a few things you need to consider first. They are related to a more holistic view of your employees and stakeholder expectation management.

1. Focus on the main goal: Before you can start running needs analysis in a sales department or any other business unit, you must have clear ideas of why you need this audit. You can start by focusing on the main goal – individual or departmental improvement.

2. Control expectations: Stakeholders are susceptible to most company changes. You must control expectations when making training programs or running needs analysis. As managers, you must satisfy them and prepare training sessions that address their internal problems. It’s the only way you ensure optimal performance.

3. Use training to implement multiple solutions: Training programs aren’t meant to solve a unique issue that won’t affect your business's success. On the contrary, you should address as many problems as your budget allows. This way, you ensure weaknesses are overcome.

There are four steps to follow to create a successful needs analysis.

Retrieve Data And Identify Pain Points

Use surveys, focus groups, polls, etc., to gather information about what’s not working correctly in your business.

• Maybe customers aren’t being treated properly?
• The customer base is decreasing due to a need for marketing strategies?

Ask the right questions using your tools to understand the factors behind underperforming activities.

Analyze The Identified Information

Once you have a report with expected data, you can manage answers, separate them, and use your expertise to:

• Identify if a training program can fix issues
• Realize which employees aren’t performing correctly
• Determine who needs to get fired or if you need new roles or hires
• Establish if employees' abilities are enough for the projects ahead

Once you have determined all these, you can move on to the next step.

Set Up a Budget For Your Training

Here’s when you need investment and trust from your stakeholders. You need to set up a budget and a proposal about your training. You can also recommend studies and internet programs that harness workers’ abilities.

To convince stakeholders of this, you need to solve doubts like:

• Does the company have a budget assigned for training?
• Can the company afford to train employees?
• How long is the training going to take?
• Who are the employees that need support?
• What is the overall cost for the company?

You can summarize all that into a folder with the proposal, and a needs assessment template.

Evaluate What You Taught

After preparing and delivering a training plan to your staff, you should test it out. It means seeing if your workers improve over the next few days and evaluating how they solve the problem.

Needs Analysis Example

Here’s an example of a Needs Analysis prepared for an IT store:

An IT store usually has ten computers sold each day. They have an e-commerce website and also attend to customers. Most of the store’s sales come from the internet.

One day, they stopped receiving requests from the website. The platform still works but doesn’t bring any new requests. The manager comes up, separates the staff in charge of the site, and prepares a plan to amend it.

After a few days, the platform still doesn’t bring sales, and there aren't any reports about it. The manager calls out a meeting to get insights and feedback about what could be wrong.

Yet, he receives employee complaints saying they detected it was an SEO issue but don’t know how to fix it.

Now, the company has two options:

• Train employees in SEO so they can fix the problem
• Hire a new worker with previous SEO knowledge

After consideration, the manager prepares a needs analysis of the situation and addresses the lack of knowledge to prepare a training plan covering everything employees need.

As a result, after the staff finished the program, the website started bringing sales again, and the store achieved better performance.

To prepare needs assessment templates and read or use them, you need productivity software for your daily operations.

Microsoft Office 2021 suite helps you write all reports you need in your business and prepare complete, detailed records for other managers and stakeholders.

Use programs like Word to edit texts and Excel to craft charts, graphics, and dynamic tables.

You can activate this software for less than $20 using an original key that will last forever.

If you don’t want to create a needs analysis from scratch, you can use Google to find needs analysis templates that fit your reports.

Here are some of the best choices you can find on the internet:

Template #1

Training Gap Analysis Free Template. Great when you want to manage the knowledge your staff lacks. - Download Link

Template #2

Staff Training Plan Template. Shows the employees that undergo training and the units they have completed. - Download Link

Template #3

Customer/Client Needs Analysis Template. Considers the needs of clients and several methods to attend them. - Download Link

A Training Needs Analysis is an invaluable tool for businesses looking to maximize the effectiveness of their operations by providing training programs.

By identifying specific skills and knowledge gaps in their employees, companies can design targeted and effective training programs that help them reach their full potential. A well-designed program helps save time and resources while avoiding investing in other training programs that don't meet their specific needs.

Ultimately, investing in employees' professional development leads to increased job satisfaction, retention, and productivity. All this while contributing to the overall success of the organization.

Conducting a Training Needs Analysis should be part of any company's overall training and development strategy.