What Is The Importance Of The Needs Analysis?
Needs analysis is the main component of eLearning. It can help a company to design the best training for employees because it knows their requirements. The companies can contact an eLearning development company to properly conduct the needs analysis for it. A needs analysis is not an unnecessary step for a company. Although it involves time, it yields results in the long term when your company reaps the rewards of a useful training program.
Needs analysis is useful for a company because it helps L&D teams have a more controlled and result-oriented process. They develop training for those areas where employees actually need to be trained. A needs analysis done properly throws light on the ways in which employees prefer to learn, too. A needs analysis also reveals what kind of support an employee needs to remember what they have learned in the previous L&D program.
Timing Of A Needs Analysis
So, a company avoids extra expenditure on eLearning programs that won't yield many results in the long term. It's crucial that a company conduct a needs analysis in time so that any gap in the skills of an employee is addressed before it becomes a bigger problem in the long run. A needs analysis is a detailed program about why employees need to be trained. All employees might not have the same training needs.
The need for retraining employees arises due to the following reasons:
- Employees might not have been trained properly in the onboarding process. For example, employees were not made aware of the work procedures. Therefore, companies need to understand what their employees don't have knowledge of in order to make the company succeed.
- Even LMS analytics are an indicator of whether the employees are satisfied with their current training. If they are not, it clearly means that there needs to be some rectification in the current content uploaded on the LMS.
Ways To Conduct A Needs Analysis For Employee Training
There are many ways to conduct the needs analysis.
Workshops
In a workshop, it's easier for employees to talk about their opinions about what kind of knowledge is needed from them. It's the best way to know what an employee needs to learn. Yet every employee has different learning needs. So, in a workshop, they are not able to express themselves clearly. But it's not the same in a one-to-one interview where an employee can describe their problems clearly. In an interview or workshop, the employee might not be that much open to sharing their opinions of what they need to learn. Any employee's complaints can be taken seriously by the management and they might lose their job. That's why a company needs to ensure that the employees are given full protection and their views are not revealed. So, surveys are useful to ensure that the confidentiality of an employee's opinions is maintained. The employee can throw a lot of light on why the current training material is not serving any purpose.
Surveys
Surveys can reveal to a company all the reasons for the shortcomings in an employee's performance. But how to design the questions for a survey? Such questions can be closed-ended, meaning they only have definite answers. There can also be open-ended questions in a survey, which implies that the employee can write as much as they want. This is a better way for a company to determine why an employee is not able to perform up to expectations. In open-ended questions, employees are not limited by choices. So, whatever an employee feels about a certain problem, they can go into depth about it. Moreover, it's also useful to have open-ended questions in situations where a researcher might not be aware of the various solutions to the problems. But an employee can make them aware of how a situation can be resolved when given an open-ended question.
For example, while trying to implement a new L&D program where an eLearning development company might not have thought of modes, an experienced employee can throw more insight into it.
Company Records
For a company, its records are also another useful way for it to know what is causing it to fall behind. For example, customer data can actually indicate where employees are failing. The net promoter score is an effective resource for a company that wants to know how satisfied its customers are with it. If customers don't give a good score to the company on this parameter, this indicates that the company needs to provide employee training. There could be many reasons behind a customer not being content with a company, which include delayed deliveries, lack of customer support, etc.
In the end, the needs analysis program provides a company with concrete data on how to start its training program.
