Identifying the Training Needs of the Organisations

Training needs are identified at three critical and interrelated components as per McGehee and Thayer; they are Organisational Analysis, Operational Analysis and Person Analysis.

At the organisational level As all the organisations aims for achieving the excellence in their chosen field of business, an approach must be to develop individuals by way honing his attitude towards business goals, appraising and counselling him/her which can promote harmonious work culture. The management development programme like OD, MBO etc. are the common organisational needs.

At Operational level the need for fulfilling the competence gap to perform quality output, breaking the barriers of interpersonal group effectiveness, developing confidence to take up challenges and initiatives; generally clarifies the occupational need. Among these Team Development, Group Dynamism, OJT, JIT can be considered

At Individual level Skills, knowledge and attitude are the three dimensions of a performer which contributes towards his/her total effectiveness or the competence. One can have basic knowledge and skill to justify for the job description but the improvement in these dimensions with reference to the occupational and organisational needs can bring out better results. Amongst the individual needs supervisory skill development, managerial/executive development, decision making needs etc. are the important ones.

These things can achieved thru following mechanisms

Training Need Survey: which includes person’s “present needs”, “future needs”, “individual needs”, “organisational needs” and so on and so forth, this is an opinion based results hence the chances of skew ness is more and also depends on the nature and effectiveness of the survey.

Competence Analysis: This can be explained in simple words like

Current Level of Performance GAP Desired Level of Performance

Any deficiency in skill, knowledge and attitudes are identified for next role is identified and then the person is trained on those skills to acquire the necessity competency

Performance Appraisal Approach: Under this approach each person is measured on his individual ability to perform a given work as specified in the measurement criteria, any short fall there will be identified as training inputs and then forms the part of TNI

Task Analysis: some times as individual works effectively so long as he is performing on his own but when on a task to accomplish which involves contributions of others his efficiency is reduced. Task Analysis therefore, exposes out his weakness in dealing with others and his attributes to make him capable of running a group or performing a task effectively. Tasks specifications and the competence desired to perform the task precisely identify the training needs. But this takes time and skill.

Feedback Approach: This is the most commonly used method for TNI, the feedback can come from various sources like (a) Annual Report (b) Production Report (c) Performance Report (d) Comments from Managers/supervisors, this is an inexpensive approach to TNI as these information are obligatory from sources

Management Decision Approach: In this approach management decides who to be trained and on what, as management will have future business and areas of interest in mind, this is most suitable for a smaller organisation, but though this is inexpensive method, but lack in evidential aspect.