Training Needs Assessment: Methods, Questions and How to Conduct One
For many years, I taught a series of workshops at a university on topics such as designing training, conducting interactive workshops and how to conduct a training needs assessment. The audience of Human Resource Managers and Training Managers were very new to their roles. Still others in the program were managers who were aspiring to be HR and training professionals and wanted to be in on the so-called secrets of our profession.
A training needs assessment, also called a training needs analysis or TNA, is the process of finding out what people need to learn to do their work well and which of those needs training can meet. It compares the performance an organization needs with the performance it has, asks the people closest to the work where the gaps are and turns the answers into priorities for training and development. Done well, it tells you what to build, for whom and in what order before any design time is spent.
This guide shares a few examples, and outlines the method we still rely on most for training needs analysis, and adds the rest of the practice: why assess, the three levels an assessment works at, how to choose among ten methods for assessment, a five-step process, question sets for employees, managers and senior leaders, a focus group agenda, examples from our work, when to assess and the support tools to keep on hand. Needs assessment is also where our employee assessment and instructional design work begins.
Training needs assessment methods
When we covered how to conduct a training needs assessment, I noticed that I often got tangled in one particular section: selecting the method to use to gather data. I would share all manner of options, including:
- One-on-one structured interviews
- Observation checklists of specific work tasks in critical areas
- Written surveys of needs within audience groups
- Knowledge-testing against procedures or policies
- Mock scenarios or other simulations
- Topical-based focus groups
- Benchmarking of similar or related roles in related industries
- Documentation reviews such as performance appraisals, internal resumes or profiles
- Multi-rater (360-feedback) survey results
- Stellar vs. under-performing observation comparisons
We would then practice. I’d give scenarios and they’d choose methods that might be effective. We’d gather situations they faced in their organizations and advise each other on how to be sure that we were addressing real needs. After all, I preached: it was a waste of time and resources to create a solution to a problem that wasn’t really relevant to the audience. Rarely did we, as a group, disagree on the methods to use in a particular situation. In fact, we were so aligned that I wondered why these groups of "newbies" even needed a program: they knew what they were doing. This was where my tangling happened.
I believed that in-depth needs assessment was valuable, so much so that in our consultancy I was reluctant to complete instructional design with clients who didn’t conduct one. But, I also knew that in the “real world,” needs assessment could rarely happen the way we all just knew it should. There never seemed to be enough time, enough access to people, enough interest by stakeholders. There was never enough _________ (fill in that blank). Yet, here I was teaching what I knew the group would have difficulty pulling off. And this is where I made a change. I continued to introduce the various methods but would end that segment of the workshop by telling them the truth: all of this is good, but when it comes down to it, just ask. Ask the one doing the job. Ask their managers what they see their staff needing. Ask, and if you then have enough _____________ (time, access, interest, etc.), you can validate another way. Otherwise, run with what they tell you. Believe them. Conduct the training on what they say is needed and sprinkle in what your other data points tell you is relevant. Yes, this advice flew in the face of what the other experts would recommend. But in the end, the simple act of asking about needs did two things that were equally important to the success of the training:
- Built buy-in and interest from the audience or their managers, something that is universally difficult to gain.
- Reallocated scarce instructional design resources for the designing, developing and implementation of training, rather than the determining of needs.
I no longer teach that training needs assessment program at the university, but I do practice what I preach: when doing a needs assessment, I ask. Now, how I ask: that’s an entirely different workshop.
The same discipline scales down to individuals: an assessment center takes the same discipline to individual level, pairing interviews with instruments to find what each person actually needs.
Choosing among the ten methods
A needs assessment can take many forms: conversations, focus groups, review of performance appraisals, skills tests, observation on the job, simulations and more. Training and Development Managers, HR Managers and Talent Development professionals often have a favorite approach. Keep in mind that needs assessments don’t have to be overwhelming, they can be simple. For instance, an online survey can have a broad reach and yield important information. A conversation with a key stakeholder about what she or he sees as needs for talent is often very insightful and confirming.
When there is time and access for more than asking, the table compares the ten methods by what each can reveal, the effort involved and when it tends to fit best.
| Method | What It Can Reveal | Effort | Best When |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-on-one structured interviews | Detailed views on needs and their causes from a small group | Medium to high | The audience is small or senior, or the topic is sensitive |
| Observation checklists of work tasks | What people do on the job against the standard | High | Tasks can be observed and errors are costly |
| Written surveys of needs | Perceived needs and priorities across a large group | Low to medium | The audience is large or spread across regions |
| Knowledge-testing against procedures or policies | What people know, as distinct from what they do | Medium | Product, policy or compliance knowledge is the concern |
| Mock scenarios or simulations | How people apply skills in realistic situations | High | Judgment and interpersonal skills are the focus |
| Topical-based focus groups | Shared views, priorities and the reasons behind them | Medium | You need depth from several people at once |
| Benchmarking of similar roles | How the role compares with the same role elsewhere | Medium | A role is new or changing |
| Documentation reviews | Patterns already recorded in appraisals, profiles and plans | Low | The data exists and time is short |
| Multi-rater (360-feedback) results | How others see a person's or a group's behavior | Low if results exist, high to collect | Leadership and interpersonal behaviors are the focus |
| Stellar vs. under-performing comparisons | What top performers do differently | High | A role has clear high and low performers |
Most assessments combine two or three methods: one broad, such as a survey or a documentation review, and one deep, such as interviews or a focus group. The combination lets you check what people say against what the records and observations show.
Why conduct a training needs assessment?
We believe the most successful development of talent happens when you don’t just teach theory, you teach skills. But, how do you evaluate what skills are truly needed by your leaders, sales associates, team members and others? One way is to conduct a training needs assessment.
Training content should be real-world, relatable and repeatable. When participants learn skills that improve their effectiveness, they are more motivated and in turn higher contributors in their roles. Building skills is important, but they need to be the right skills.
Here’s a list of just a few of the things conducting a training needs assessment can do for you:
- Establish priorities for Training, Talent Management, Coordination, HR functions.
- Build a case for known or new training, development and other performance management initiatives.
- Structure annual budgets as part of planning processes.
- Motivate and build involvement of managers in training.
- Demonstrate the degree that training and HR values input from specific roles.
The three levels of a training needs assessment
The three-level view of needs assessment goes back to William McGehee and Paul Thayer, who in 1961 described needs analysis at the level of the organization, the operations or tasks and the individual [1]. Irwin Goldstein and Kevin Ford's text on training in organizations keeps the same structure as organizational, task and person analysis [2]. The levels answer different questions.
| Level | Question It Answers | Typical Sources | What It Produces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organization | Where does the business need different performance, and what supports or blocks it? | Strategy and business plans, KPIs, engagement survey results, senior leader interviews | Priorities tied to business goals |
| Task or role | What does the work require, and to what standard? | Job descriptions, competency models, observation, top-performer comparisons | The knowledge, skills and behaviors each role needs |
| Individual | Who needs what, and how much? | Assessments, performance appraisals, surveys, manager input, individual development plans | The groups and people each learning solution serves |
For individual needs, individual development plans are a source many organizations overlook. Read across enough plans and the patterns show where a group needs development, alongside what people tell you when you ask.
How to conduct a training needs assessment in five steps
Most needs assessments follow the same sequence, whatever the methods. In practice the steps overlap: a focus group in step four often sharpens the audience defined in step two.
- Start with the business need and the sponsor. Find out what prompted the learning request, which goals it supports, who will use the findings and what decision they will make with the information. Agree how the results will be used before collecting anything.
- Define the audience and the level. Decide which roles and regions are in scope and whether the potential need is organizational, task or individual. A narrower audience tends to give clearer answers.
- Choose methods, starting with asking. Pick one or two methods that fit the time, access and interest available. Asking the people doing the job and their managers is the minimum; add documentation reviews, observation or assessment where the stakes justify the effort.
- Collect the data, then separate training needs from the rest. Some gaps are knowledge and skill. Others come from unclear expectations, missing tools, missing information or consequences that do not change with performance, and training may not close them. Our guide to matching performance problems to HR solutions sorts nine causes of performance gaps and the solutions that fit each.
- Report back and plan. Share a short summary with the sponsor and, where appropriate, with the people who took part. Agree priorities and feed them into the learning and development plan for the year.
Training needs assessment questions
Most needs assessment questions fall into three groups, depending on who you ask. Allison Rossett described needs assessment as a search for five kinds of information: what should happen, what happens now, how people feel about the skill and about training, what causes the gap and what solutions people see [3]. The questions below cover all five. Use them as interview prompts, focus group questions or survey items.
Questions for employees in the role
- Which parts of your job matter most to the results your team is measured on?
- Which tasks take longer than they should, and why?
- Where do you feel least confident, and what would help?
- What have you learned on the job in the last year that you wish you had known sooner?
- Which past training helped you most, and what made it work?
- How do you prefer to learn: in a workshop, online, on the job or from a colleague?
- Other than skills, what gets in the way of doing your best work?
Questions for managers
- What does success look like in this role over the next year?
- Where do your team members most need support, and what examples tell you so?
- What do your best performers do that others do not?
- Which problems keep coming back, and what do you think causes them?
- What would you need to see to know that training had worked?
- How much time can your team give to learning, and when?
Questions for senior leaders and sponsors
- Which business goals depend most on people doing something differently?
- What changes in the next two years, in technology, markets or structure, will change what people need to know?
- Where are you seeing performance gaps today, in results or in behavior?
- Who will use the findings, and what decision will they make with them?
- What would a successful program change in the first six months?
For a survey, turn the same questions into two ratings for each skill or competency, one for importance to the role and one for current proficiency, and look first at the items rated high on importance and low on proficiency. Keep the survey short enough to finish in one sitting, and leave one open question for anything the list missed.
A focus group agenda for a training needs assessment
The agenda below is an example of how PPS conducts a training needs assessment focus group. The purpose of the meeting is to uncover perceptions about training and development needs of a specific target audience in an organization. Participants should be representatives of the target audience, as well as perhaps a session of their managers, customers, direct reports or peers. The example is written for supervisors; substitute the role you are assessing.
| Time | Segment | What Happens |
|---|---|---|
| 10 minutes | Welcome and set up | Explain the purpose of the meeting, set ground rules for gathering information, explain who you are and what you do, explain what you will do with the information shared and complete introductions |
| 40 minutes | Success profile | Ask about the significant business goals supervisors are responsible for and how they relate to the business strategy, what it takes to be successful as a supervisor here and how supervisors are seen by their managers, direct reports and peers; capture answers on three charts: skills, knowledge and ability; tools; organizational support; use collaborative technology to support data collection before and after discussion |
| Within the 40 minutes | Past experience with training | Participants pair up to list what has and has not worked, report back and describe how training would be conducted in an ideal world: where, when, by whom and how success would be tracked |
| Within the 40 minutes | Fit with the culture | Ask what advice participants would give a newcomer about how people learn best at this organization; use collaborative capture tools to support documentation |
| Optional | Word association | Use online polls, surveys and word clouds to invite participants to comment on the charts that interest them and prioritize the list |
| 10 minutes | Current state | Ask where supervisors seem to need the most support against the success profile or business goals, and ask for evidence or examples and collect and document |
| 10 minutes | Close | Ask for final thoughts and anything missed, share the facilitator's contact information, remind participants how the information will be used and thank them |
After the session, compile responses and actions into a report of findings for the sponsor you described at the start of the session.
Needs assessment in practice: four examples
Here are three examples from our published work.
- For an Asia-Pacific medical devices organization, the client's Human Resources team used assessments to validate the challenges seen in client-facing roles, including decisions made with limited data. Our needs analysis and consultation turned those findings into a design strategy that met the client's goals and resource budget, as the ambiguity case study describes.
- For a global pharmaceutical and consumer products organization preparing 2,500 manufacturing employees for a more data-driven operation, needs assessment is the first of the services the case lists. The design that followed fit shift patterns through manufacturing supervisors and ran in several languages, as the microlearning case study describes.
- For a global medical technology organization, a virtual sales assessment center applied the same thinking to individuals, identifying the strengths and development needs of sales representatives already in the role so that coaching, training and stretch assignments could be matched to what individuals and groups need.
- For a global technology organization, we created and implemented a department-by-department development assessment using pulse surveys and follow-up interviews. Using collaborative technology, the process was completed in a single day and the results report within two days.
When to conduct a training needs assessment
For those whose organizational planning and budgeting cycle aligns with the calendar year, the last quarter of the year is typically a useful time to complete a training needs assessment. It can help identify gaps in knowledge, competencies to be built and areas for investment in the future.
Cues that a training needs assessment would be helpful include:
- Senior leaders or others are asking for training as a solution, but have difficulty describing the learning outcomes and behavior change that is desired.
- As you are designing and developing training, the project scope increases (seemingly with each meeting). This often happens when the underlying needs to be addressed aren’t fulfilled.
- Your training and development efforts don’t seem to be appreciated or recognized by your organization. This could be a sign that you aren’t addressing the items of most importance to them.
Is there ever a time not to do a needs assessment? The answer is YES! You may not want to conduct a formal training needs assessment if you have just completed another extensive data-gathering process such as an employee engagement survey or senior leadership roundtables. Instead of bringing in more information, you can tap into that data as a rich source of information about training and development needs. ‘Over-surveying’ can create a buildup of expectation for your employee groups and a perception that you, as a talent development professional, have analysis-paralysis.
Support tools for a training needs assessment
Some needs assessment tools that are good to have on hand as a professional in talent development include:
- A structured interview template to hold discussions with stakeholders about specific needs. This ensures you are professional and consistent in your discussions.
- A focus group agenda, to make use of small and large groups’ time.
- An online, generic needs assessment survey, for periodic input from your leaders and managers.
- A follow-up executive presentation structure you can use to share the information back to your management team or internal client groups.
- An HRIS or other performance support systems with a needs assessment reporting function.
- A series of Gen AI prompts to help analyze data from existing sources such as individual development plans.
PPS International Limited has structured formats for conducting structured interviews with stakeholders, analyzing existing organizational data, running focus groups and online needs assessments.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a training needs assessment and a training needs analysis?
The terms training needs assessment and training needs analysis are used interchangeably. Some practitioners use assessment for gathering the information and analysis for interpreting it, and many use training needs analysis, or TNA, for the whole process. Either way, both parts need to happen: collecting evidence of the gap and deciding which part of it training can close.
How long does a training needs assessment take?
Length of time to complete a needs assessment depends on the scope. A focused assessment for one role, built on interviews and a short survey, can often be finished in two weeks; with supportive technology, even less time. An assessment across several regions and roles usually takes longer, especially when it includes observation or assessment centers. When time is short, start by asking and by reviewing the data you already have.
How often should we conduct one?
Many organizations run a broad assessment each year to feed the learning and development plan, often in the last quarter for calendar-year budgets, and a focused one whenever a role, a strategy or a system changes. If a large survey has just been completed, use its data instead of running another.
Should we share the results with the people who took part?
We recommend sharing results back to those who participated. Telling participants what was heard and what will happen next is part of what builds the buy-in described earlier, and it makes the next assessment easier to run. The focus group agenda opens by explaining how the information will be used for the same reason.
Can AI help with a training needs assessment?
It can help with the analysis, such as sorting open-ended survey comments into themes or summarizing interview notes. Draft your own questions first and review the output yourself, because AI can support the thinking but does not replace talking with the people doing the job. Use your company-approved tool, since responses can include names and sensitive information.
Where to start
Pick a priority role or an area of the organization where training is often requested. Ask a handful of people doing the job and their managers the questions above as a starting point. Then, decide whether you have enough to act or need one more method to confirm what you heard.
PPS International Limited offers a free, online manager-driven needs assessment to select organizations. This tool asks managers about what they need in order to be successful in their roles and links this to how skillful they perceive themselves to be in this area. If you have a group that would benefit from this needs assessment, please let us know. This information can be especially helpful as you plan and establish budgets for your upcoming calendar year. It is the first input to the learning and development plan for the year.
References
- McGehee, W. and Thayer, P. W. (1961). Training in Business and Industry. John Wiley & Sons.
- Goldstein, I. L. and Ford, J. K. (2002). Training in Organizations: Needs Assessment, Development and Evaluation (4th ed.). Wadsworth.
- Rossett, A. (1987). Training Needs Assessment. Educational Technology Publications.
