Jan Hills of HR consultancy HR With Guts suggests taking a more positive approach to your training needs analysis, by focusing on the outcome rather than the problem.
When you feel your HR team could be working more efficiently, or at a higher level, and you are unsure as to how to go about making those changes, a ‘training needs analysis’ can be an effective way to identify the gaps between the skills needed in the business and the skills of the team. It is a way of surveying the training required and what’s more, can help prioritise different areas of training that are needed by analysing the business goals and the skills required to meet those goals.
However, I have found that most training analysis focuses on what people aren’t doing and what they aren’t skilled at. This might seem the obvious way to approach the issue of training – identify what people cannot do, and work from there.
However, if the training analysis focuses only on what people are failing to do, it means that they are only approaching the training from a ‘problem’ frame of mind. By conducting the training analysis in this way, the subsequent training programme can only focus on those failed areas and fill in the skill gaps. This can undoubtedly be useful, but by only focusing on existing problems, the training needs analysis fails to identify any desired future outcomes.
Focusing on the negative will result in only remedial training. By asking people what they can’t do and what they are not skilled at, the individual and the team can only progress so far. This means that the training focuses on those who are perhaps not doing so well, ‘catching up’ with how the best of the team already performs, rather than looking to where you would like that whole team to be. Looking at the training this way means that you are always looking backward rather than forward.
Different results
By changing the focus of the training needs analysis to a positive approach, you immediately get different results that focus on what people are already doing well and how that can be developed further. Some of you may be concerned that this means that the people at the top move higher, leaving the people doing less well behind. I believe that this kind of training analysis can help to develop the whole team far further.
At HR With Guts, we use the ‘success profile’ as a tool to profile the most successful people within a business and to identify the working practices that they use to achieve that success. We have found in the past that every company has its strengths and areas of success, but in most cases that success isn’t consistent across all areas of the business and for all people.
Our approach is to look at individuals and identify the five or six critical beliefs and working practices that make the highest achievers successful. One thing that we often find is that a number of high achievers who have taken part in the ‘success profile’ feel they would benefit from deeper training, so it has the double benefit of identifying how those high achievers can improve. Also those ‘average’ performers can be trained to adopt the successful practices of the high performers.
Training should be available for those that are already doing well, as well as those who have areas of difficulty. I find that many HR development programmes are seen as a way of fixing problems, but what they should be doing is advancing and aiding everyone to do much better. By refocusing the training in this way, you are able to develop programmes that focus on successful practices, ensure everyone adopts these practices and help those who are already top performers achieve mastery.
Structure the training
High achievers do not always know or understand what it is they do that makes them successful so by structuring the training to identify what employees are already doing well, it can be developed to expand on those successful working practices and beliefs as well as provide people with alternative good practices so they have more flexibility in their working.
And by training people working at the top of their game, good practices will feed down to other members of the team.
So, what practical methods can you employ to make sure you invest in all of the team, including the high achievers? One easy way to begin to shift the focus of the training begins with the training analysis. When conducting interviews or surveys with senior managers to determine training needs, rather than asking: “What does this group of sales associates need to be better at?”
Change the focus of the question to: “What do your most successful people do that your average people don’t?”
By refocusing the training needs analysis to look forward to desired outcomes, rather than only looking backwards and filling skills gaps, you can develop a training programme that can benefit the whole team.
For more information, please visit HR With Guts.
One Response
TNA – Education v Development
I really valued Jan’s article on TNA, in emphasising the positive as much as looking for the missing gaps.
I think this links in neatly with two quite different issues:
a) do we all have the core knowledge and skills to do our jobs acceptably, for which I see ‘competences’, NVQs, professional qualifications/memberships etc etc, and ‘education’ over-all all as providing a basic backbone; and
b) what could we do even better that we may already do ‘acceptably’, that will be core to our organisation’s success, which I see as being far more related to our *competency*, experience and further professional development.
‘Training’ occupies both domains of course, but while a) above requires the achievement of a minimum standard, b) is open-ended and may have no limit – nor even formal criteria of judgement or assessment. Now *that* is ‘development’!
(To pick up on Jan’s thoughts, no wonder that a) may centre around ‘process’ and b) must focus on ‘outcomes’?)
So as a businessman, I’d want to recruit against the criteria of a) above in the first instance, and support the necessary further education opportunities of my teams as appropriate downstream, just as a good employer; but I’d want to spend the great majority of my training budget on b). That is where I am going to achieve my greatest, sustainable competitive advantage.
As it happens, I spend all my professional life nowadays on b) above and hardly at all in a). And I find the following:
i) few, even very senior professionals, however experienced, have any idea of ‘knowing what they didn’t know’ – how could they?;
ii) the more skilled the professional, the more they realise how much more there was still to know, given the opportunity, the more eagerly they seek this knowledge and skill-baase, and the more highly they value exploring and developing this for themselves further;
iii) they then become even better developers of others behind them, whether only by example, by mentoring and coaching, just simple encouragement, or hands-on development and support.
So for me, TNA is ‘OK’ for a) above, even if inclined towards stiffling tactical bureaucracy in larger organisations without care, and investment in proper professional competency-mapping and assessment on recruitment, followed by detailed performance management are essential requirements to make a) above work. Accentuating the positive is great, but ‘missing gaps’ do need to be filled.
On the other hand, meeting the needs of b) above *must* reinforce the positive, and long may it. But I would argue that ‘TNA’ is far too blunt, impersonal, generic and tactical an instrument to achieve this.
What say you?
Kind regards
Jeremy