Training Needs Assessments

Why Training?

Have you ever been driving along in your and had the “Engine Warning” light come on! What did you do? Panic? Pulled over and opened the hood? Called AAA or your mechanic? Ignored it?

If your car is less than 20 years old, there a many warning lights – Low Fuel, Oil Change, Low Tire Pressure, Engine Heat, Alternator Failure, and on, and on.

Some warnings you circumvent by buying fuel, changing oil, checking tier pressure, and the like. But how did you know to do these things – you were trained! It may have been self-study – reading the manual; it may have been coaching – your dad or mechanic; or a class – driver’s education.

At some point, someone analyzed the skills and knowledge needed to perform these basic functions and put together a training plan.

What Training Does Your Organization Need?

Like a car, your organization gives off a lot of warnings! Poor customer service reports, failed projects, excessive meetings on the same subject, poor decisions, lost customers, dropping sales, high turnover, stagnant work force, system changes that fail, etc, etc.

What warnings do you see? It’s a surprising fact that most organizations fail to see the warning signs! They know something isn’t working, but cannot point to anything specific. Or, they have no idea – we’re still making a profit – if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!

Again, like with your car, you do the preventive things – new software, do training; new computing system, do training; new process, do training; merger or acquisition, maybe training – send an email; change in leadership, we’ll adjust, send an email; new competitor, why make waves!

TrainSmart is skilled at finding your warnings before the “Engine Warning” or some other warning lights up! To do this we conduct a needs assessment to identify gaps in skills and knowledge.

Then we leverage the results to align individual and organization learning needs with your business strategies and objectives – every time!

How Do We Conduct A Training Needs Assessment?

We work with you to:

• Decide on the data needed and how to collect it
• Prepare and execute a project plan
• Turn the data into usable information
• Isolate performance improvement potential
• Develop and execute learning or change solutions

What Tools Are Leveraged?

• Surveys
• Individual Interviews / Focus Groups
• Existing Standards / Procedures
• Statistics / Records
• Past suggestions
• Meetings, Reports, and Newsletters

Other Organizational Tools

• Organizational Learning Inventory
• Training Audit (customized)
• Training Needs Assessment

Assessments – Individual and Teams

• All Inscape Publishing Profiles (online or paper-based)
• Numerous DISC® options / PPSS / Time Mastery / Coping and Stress / Dimensions of Leadership / Discovery Diversity /Personal Listening / Personal Learning Insights / Work Expectations / Team Dimensions / Numerous cultural and team sub-reports / Leadership 363
• All Profiles International Profiles (online or paper-based)
  ProfileXT / Step One Survey II / Performance Indicator / Sales Indicator / CheckPoint 360 /
  Team Analysis / Customer Service Perspective / CheckPoint SkillBuilder
• Myers-Briggs
• 360 Assessments (customized)

Assessments – Technical

• Windows
• Microsoft Office
• Other Technical (Customized)

Industries We Conducted Assessments For:

• Manufacturing
• Pharmaceutical
• Financial
• Food Service
• Hotel
• Retail
• Healthcare

Case Study: Training Needs Assessment

Client

A medium-sized, casualty insurance company, part of a large Canadian insurance conglomerate, located in the Mid-west.

Need

The company had no formal training programs. All new hire training involved on-the-job training with whoever was available to train. To help increase the productivity and quality of its claims adjusters, the client wanted to implement a training initiative beginning with the design and development of three courses. As the courses had not been identified, TrainSmart was hired to conduct a training needs assessment before developing the courses.

Project

The data collection phase of the training needs assessment involved:

• Focus group of claims adjusters
• Follow-up interviews with additional adjusters
• Literature review of critical claims adjuster training courses

Based on this input, the claims supervisors and CEO met with TrainSmart to determine the three courses should be: Stress Management, Time Management and Customer Service.

Based on the company’s practice of hiring claims adjusters one at a time, TrainSmart develop the on-going training in the form of self-study guides augmented by a designated training coach. TrainSmart then adapted the self-study guides to an instructor-led format to accommodate the training of current claims adjusters.