How to customize employee training with a data-driven training needs assessment

More employers are investing in learning and development programs and better employee training. That’s because employees feel more engaged and valued when their employers take the time to invest in their growth. And it costs organizations a lot more to replace employees than it does to train their existing ones.

But the most effective employee training programs aren’t one-size-fits-all. Each organization, team, or individual has unique needs. So, how can learning and development teams customize training at scale?

They conduct training needs assessments to identify gaps or shortcomings, then create employee training programs to fill those gaps. Here’s how training needs assessments work and how you can conduct one, too.

A Training Needs Assessment (TNA) is used by businesses to identify employee performance gaps and skill deficiencies. It examines various aspects, from customer satisfaction to employee competencies, using methods like observational studies and surveys. The goal is to pinpoint areas where training can drive improvement and inform the development of targeted initiatives.

The results of a TNA guide the creation of customized training programs at organizational, occupational, and individual levels. This approach ensures that training efforts align with business objectives while addressing specific role requirements. By systematically identifying priorities, organizations can optimize their learning investments and enhance overall performance.

Let’s say your company is struggling with its Net Promoter® Score (NPS). Over the last couple of years, customers have become less likely to recommend your brand to others. You know your company needs to do better. But where do you start?

You hypothesize that your employees must become more connected to your customers and your company's mission. You think this lack of connection results in bad service, uninspired products, and poor differentiation in a competitive market.

So you try to address this at all levels: empathy and communication training, customer stories, team building events, a company vision offsite, technical training, continuing education for employees, and more.

That’s a lot of time, money, and resources to spend on solving a problem you haven’t clearly defined. A training needs analysis is a targeted opportunity to figure out:

Training needs assessments are also important for measuring progress. Especially if you need to build a business case for a certain training program or report on results. Before developing a training program, you can establish a baseline or benchmarks and then compare post-training performance to measure your performance.

You’ll also want to offer regular training to employees to show them you’re investing in their growth and development. It probably goes without saying that having engaged employees is crucial to a positive work culture and productivity.

First, you’ll want to determine the scope of your TNA. Are you trying to plan training for your entire organization, teams (occupations), or individual employees?

It makes sense to consider all three levels when conducting a training needs analysis. That’s because your goals will likely ladder up or trickle down. (For example, training a customer service team to be more empathetic and responsive will likely impact the organization’s customer satisfaction ratings.)

But when conducting the research, you need to figure out the right training to offer if you want to stay focused on your main purpose.

Once you’ve set your focus area and business goals, it’s time to figure out how you will perform your analysis. If you decide that negative product experiences are causing low customer satisfaction, you’ll want to create a plan to understand the problem. This plan includes:

Here are a few examples of how you could collect data within your organization:

Next, you’ll want to analyze the data you collect to figure out your most pressing training needs. This will also help you create benchmarks you can measure against in the future. These benchmarks will tell you how effective your training is.

You can use advanced survey analysis tools, like charting, combined filters, and open-ended text analysis, to pick up on important trends and patterns.

You’ll also want to see how employees performed in their pre-training survey and compare that against your organization’s expectations.

You’ve got the data. You’ve pinpointed trends and areas that could use improvements. However, you must weigh this against your organization’s goals, resources, and priorities. Carefully consider each of these, and then prepare a recommendation that includes:

You know what your training should include, and who should receive it. But for the most effective training, you’ll want to survey employees on their availability, how they like to learn, what motivates them, and more.

If your program goal is to help new employees feel more connected to your company and start contributing faster, you can rely on surveys as a part of your training program. For example, send employees a new hire onboarding survey. After you conduct orientation training, you can send them a new hire training quiz to see how well they remember what they learned.

Once you launch your training program, you’ll want to regularly collect feedback from attendees. Send a training course evaluation survey to see if your content was useful and well-delivered. 

Finally, you’ll want to follow up with attendees after a certain period to see if they’ve retained that information and if and how they’ve put it to good use. This will help you make important changes to your training so it’ll continue to be effective.

As you can see, a well-researched TNA takes time and effort. However, generic training programs risk wasting valuable resources. When you use surveys for your training needs analysis, you get the data you need to customize employee training programs and gain insights into the overall employee experience. This helps you attract and retain the talented people who will make your company thrive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.