Assignment 1: Analyze Training Needs
Select an organization for the authentic assessment. Ideally, this is the organization you are currently working for. You may also use an organization that you used to work for or one that you are very familiar with.
In this first assignment, you will develop a training needs assessment (TNA) for your chosen organization. Specifically, you will develop a plan to conduct a training needs assessment that will include the information below. The work that you do in this assignment will form the foundation for the work that you do on each of the remaining assignments for this course – so take your time, be thorough and thoughtful. I will use the rubric attached to grade your work. It follows the expectations detailed below.
YOUR TNA PAPER WILL:
Be well written -free from errors and follow APA guidelines for formatting, citations, and references. You will NOT submit a rough, unedited draft.
Provide information about the organization – the type of organization it is, the business it is in, its mission, its location(s), the number of employees it has, the customers it serves, the industry it is in (ex., healthcare, K-12 education, government, etc), and other pertinent information about the enterprise. Make sure to include citations for the sources of informaiton you use to describe the organizaiton.
Describe the performance problem. What is not working or not working optimally in the organization? What is the ideal state? What is the actual state? What caused the problem? What is the best solution? What obstacles prevent optimal performance from occurring? Can training help correct the identified problem? If so, how?
Describe how you would conduct a TNA (including an organizational, operational and person analysis). Include details about exactly what you would do at each stage – who you would gather data from and how (e.g., interviews, focus groups, surveys, data review, etc.). What questions would you ask or want answered at each stage and by whom to help you understand the problem better, get to the best solution(s), and, if training is one of those solutions, obtain the answers to these questions:
What is the desired performance? What is the actual performance? (e.g., What is the performance gap?
What caused the performance to be less than expected or required? (Note: improving performance will be the focus of the training that is developed in response to the TNA) (Blanchard & Thacker, 2010, p. 96).
What obstacles prevent optimal performance from occurring?
Can training help correct the identified problem?
What other intervention(s) besides training are needed to close the performance gap?
Who needs to be trained?
What knowledge, skills, and attitudes need to be developed in the target group of trainees?
How will we know if the training has been effective in addressing the performance issues it was designed to solve?
To help you successfully complete this task, there are a few resources you will find helpful. The first is a framework for your report to follow. That is the format I would like your reports to take: TNA Plan Template. If possible, I would like you to use your current (or a previous employer) as the focus on the exercise (and of the remaining assignments). If that isn’t possible, you can choose any organizaiton that you are familiar with to focus on.