Assessing HRD Needs PDF

Assessing HRD Needs NICOLAS T. MALLARI  Needs assessment (or needs analysis) is a process by which an organization’s HRD needs are identified and articulated. It is the starting point of the HRD and training need process. A need assessment can identify the following: An organization’s g...

Assessing HRD Needs NICOLAS T. MALLARI  Needs assessment (or needs analysis) is a process by which an organization’s HRD needs are identified and articulated. It is the starting point of the HRD and training need process. A need assessment can identify the following: An organization’s goals and its effectiveness in reaching these goals. Discrepancies or gaps between employees’ skills and the skills required for effective current job performance Discrepancies (gaps) between current skills and the skills needed to perform the job successfully in the future The conditions under which the HRD activity will occur. Needs assessments are not conducted for a number of reasons 1. A needs assessment can be a difficult, time-consuming process. A complete needs analysis involves measuring a variety of factors at multiple levels of the organization. 2. Action is valued over research. Managers often decide to use their limited resources to develop, acquire, and deliver HRD programs rather than to do something they see as a preliminary activity  3. Incorrect assumptions are made that a needs assessment is unnecessary because available information already specifies what an organization’s needs are. As indicated earlier, factors such as fads, demands from senior managers, and the temptation to copy the HRD programs of widely admired organizations or competitors often lead to such conclusions. 4. There is a lack of support for needs assessment. This can be caused by a lack of bottom-line justification or by the HRD professional’s inability to sell needs assessment to management. Documenting the assessment and its benefits, and using analogies from respected fields (e.g., medical diagnosis, engineering scoping), are two ways to build support for doing needs assessment. What Is a Training or HRD Need? Diagnostic needs focus on the factors that lead to effective performance and prevent performance problems, rather than emphasizing existing problems. Diagnostic needs are identified by studying the different factors that may impact performance. The goal is to determine how effective performance is obtained. For example, Lisa Harrison and colleagues report on a training needs assessment survey conducted for public health workers in North Carolina. The purpose was to identify core competencies that could be used to train public health workers in advance for emergency preparedness  Analytic needs, on the other hand, identify new or better ways to perform tasks. These needs are generally discovered by intuition, insight, or expert consideration. Compliance needs are those needs mandated by law. They most often involve mandated training programs, such as safety training, food handling, or compliance with healthcare regulations. It is important to recognize that some HRD interventions are driven primarily by legal mandate, because this can affect how the intervention is perceived, as well as how it is conducted. Levels of Needs Analysis STRATEGIC/ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS Needs assessment at the organization level is usually conducted by performing an organizational analysis. Organizational analysis is a process used to better understand the characteristics of an organization to determine where training and HRD efforts are needed and the conditions under which they should be conducted.  For example, Scott Paper purchased a food service operation that suffered from low employee morale. An extensive needs assessment process resulted in the food service division implementing a succession planning and management development program. Within four years, product defects dropped dramatically, on-time delivery rates increased to 98 percent, and plant capacity increased by 35 percent. The point to stress here is that the organizational analysis they conducted (as part of the overall needs assessment) provided the impetus for a successful HRD effort, as well as the content for the actual development program. Components of a Strategic/Organizational Needs Analysis Organizational Goals. Understanding an organization’s goals and strategies provides a starting point in identifying the effectiveness of the organization. Areas where an organization meets its goals probably don’t require training efforts, but should be monitored to ensure that opportunities for improvement and potential problems are identified early. Effective areas can be used as models, and as a source of ideas for how things can be done more effectively in other areas. Areas where goals are not being met should be examined further and targeted for HRD or other appropriate HR or management effort. Methods of Strategic/Organizational Analysis  Task analysis (sometimes called operations analysis) is a systematic collection of data about a specific job or group of jobs used to determine what employees should be taught to achieve optimal performance. Results of a task analysis typically include the appropriate standards of performance, how tasks should be performed to meet these standards, and the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that employees need to possess in order to meet the standards. PERSON ANALYSIS Person analysis is directed at determining the training needs of the individual employee. The focus is typically on how well each employee is performing key job tasks, but this process may identify a wide range of both common and unique HRD needs. Someone who can observe the employee’s performance on a regular basis is in the best position to conduct a person analysis. Traditionally, person analysis has involved an employee and that employee’s immediate supervisor. Depending on the nature of an individual’s work, that employee’s peers, customers, and subordinates may also be in a position to provide information that can be used to identify person-level needs. In fact, an evaluation approach called 360-degree performance appraisal uses as many of these sources as possible to get a complete picture of an employee’s performance.