Planning for Needs Analysis

Assignment Introduction

In this week’s assignment, we were to explore a company from a list that was provided to us. We were asked to try to get a sense of the organization's products and/or services, consumers, management philosophy, and strategic objectives. Then we were to recommend how we would approach the needs assessment specific to stakeholder we would need to get buy-in from, types of questions we would ask during the organizational, audience, and task analysis phases, what documents or records might we request to see, and what techniques would we employ.

Intel

The Organization I choose to explore was Intel. Intel offers both product and services to a large range of customers. The customers could be from business, education, or consumer and can be located globally. The products and service they offer are anywhere from processors, devices, networking and communications, to software and services. This by no means is a complete list of all their products and services but gives you a good idea that they are a tech organization. The management philosophy started with Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore which is “go off and do something wonderful” and included a hands-on work environment (Intel, 2013). Their strategic objectives are to power the majority of servers and the cloud, allowing businesses to transform their industries by quickly sharing data, storing information, and making content accessible from anywhere in the world (Intel, 2017).

What stakeholders would I want to make sure I have buy-in from?

I would want to include upper-level managers to determine if training is related to the company’s business strategy and if so, what type of training is required (Noe, 2013). Mid-Level managers would be included to attain the financial goals for the particular units they supervise (Noe, 2013). Finally, I would want to include SMEs to find the possible gaps in knowledge and skills and job incumbents that are currently performing the jobs to tap into their knowledge about the job (Noe, 2013).

The type of questions I would ask and to whom during the organizational, audience, and task analysis phases?

Organizational Analysis Questions

Upper-level Management

• Is training important to achieve our business objectives?
• How does training support our business strategy?
• What are the threats to our talent base?

Mid-level Management

• Do you want to spend money on training?
• If you want to spend money on training what is the budget?

Audience Analysis Questions

Upper-level Management

• Do employees in specific functions or business units need training?
• What do employees need to do to accomplish our business objectives?

Mid-Level Management

• Who should be trained? Managers? Professionals? Core employees?

SME

• Do you see anyone other members of the organization that isn’t on my list that should also be included in the training?

Task Analysis Questions

Upper-level Management

• Does the company have people with the knowledge, skills, and abilities or competencies needed to compete in the marketplace?

Mid-level Management

• For what jobs can training make the biggest difference in product quality or customer service?

SME

• What tasks need to be performed?
• What is the necessary equipment needed to perform the task?
• What are the conditions under which the task needs to be performed?
• What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for successful task performance?

Job incumbents

• How frequently is the task performed?
• What tools are used to perform the task successfully?
• What role performs the task?
• What are the steps to performing the task successfully?
• Is there currently a process or procedure document on how to perform the task successfully?

What documents or records might I request to see?

The type of data I would request to see would be historical data, which should include performance date levels. This data would help with establishing what current state looks like and how we can get to the desired performance upper-management is looking to obtain (Noe, 2013). Also if there are help desk calls, assessment result, focus group documentation, interviews, and other companies training practices (Noe, 2013)

What techniques would I employee and why?

The technique I would use for performing the needs analysis would be to schedule a meeting with upper-management first so I could begin the organizational analysis. Since the organizational analysis identifies whether training suits the company’s strategic objectives and whether the company has the budget, time, and expertise for training it should be conducted first (Noe, 2013). The audience analysis and task analysis can be conducted simultaneously because it is difficult to determine whether performance deficiencies are related to a training problem without understanding the tasks and the work environment (Noe, 2013).

Reference

“Intel CEOs: A Look Back.” Intel Free Press, March 20, 2013. http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/intel-ceos-a-look-back/4967/

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6^th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill

The Truth about Training

What might you say to convince an individual that training is important, not complicated, or even necessary?

The truth about training starts with a look at the forces that influence working and learning. In this day and age, we are seeing training and training departments being affected by the globalization of business, demographic changes, new technology coming at the speed of light, and economic changes.

Let’s talk about the influence of the demographical change organizations are facing. This is the first time in history where the workforce is made up of five different generations. Companies that can increase and embraces diversity will also gain a competitive advantage over their competition. Leaders need to be aware though that members of each generation may have misperceptions of each other, causing work place tensions and misunderstandings. Also, they will each be looking for something different from their leaders and the organization that employs them. This is where training needs to start revolutionizing itself.

For an organization to be competitive it needs to enhance its capacity to learn, adapt, and change by becoming a learning organization. The most important aspects of a learning organization are the ability for employees to learn from failure and from success. This is where the diverse workforce will be most innovative. Leadership is going to have to develop new skills that will teach them how to be mentors and coaches in a learning organization. Learning and Development departments will also have to support diversity training for its workforce to cut down or eliminate misperceptions, work place tensions and misunderstandings among the different generations. Training must be strategic. It must align with the business strategy and support the business outcomes the stakeholders are looking to achieve.

Finally, an emphasis needs to be put on evaluating your training programs and events. Find what is working, learn and change what isn’t giving the organization the results they want. 

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