SHIFT's eLearning Blog

Our blog provides the best practices, tips, and inspiration for corporate training, instructional design, eLearning and mLearning.

To visit the Spanish blog, click here
    All Posts

    DON'T Skip the Training Needs Analysis! Here's Why


    As an eLearning leader or course designer, you will often encounter clients or team members who just want to skip the training needs analysis before starting the eLearning course design. They simply feel they already know what their employees need, so why waste time and resources doing this? 

    However, like with many scenarios, a skipped step today ends up costing way more in the long run. Developing eLearning courses without understanding the audience and asking the right questions is prone to give too much content, too little, or just completely wrong content. 

    Proactive eLearning Design: 10 Essential Questions You Should Ask Before Starting

    While there is a variety of constraints pushing clients, team members, and you to rush the process, there are three terrible things that can happen when you skip the training needs analysis:


     

    #1) Teaching the Right People the Wrong Skills

    Teaching ALL the skills to ALL the employees in your company might seem like a decent way to cover your bases, but it’s time-consuming and ineffective. By trying to devise a one, size fits all training you will likely not fit anyone very well.  

    Example: If you have a sales team, and half of the team is tasked with drumming up new accounts while the other is supposed to maintain existing accounts, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to teach the entire team about cold calling techniques. This wastes time and money for both employee and employer.

    Similarly, teaching things your employees already know will make them feel as if they are being talked down to and as if you don’t know them or their jobs well enough to understand what skills they already have.

    It is also important to avoid shallow needs analysis, meaning a simple survey of employees and managers to find out what skills they require is not enough. Also, don't start putting together training plans based on perceived training needs. The result: Training programs are not based on a proper needs assessment, and therefore these are highly ineffective. Take a look at the importance of evaluating corporate training needs in this article

    Effective training needs analysis will answer at least these questions:

    • Who needs training?
    • What do they need to learn?
    • What skills are needed and for what reason?
    • What skills are already in place?
    • What is needed but is not accessible?
    • What is missing from existing training?

    #2) Teaching the Right Skills To the Wrong People

    Why do the wrong people get trained?

    • An overlap of skills/training occurs when new employees come in with existing knowledge.
    • Company policy says each employee requires a certain amount of training no matter if that employee already knows it.
    • Sometimes it’s just a matter of using up the budget so the same budget can be asked for again the following year.

    Knowing your students is the best way to avoid redundancy in training; so starting with what you do know is a reasonable strategy while filling in blanks with a needs analysis. Without a training needs analysis, you can expect to have other projects suffer due to employees’ attention being taken up by the unnecessary training. Employees who are forced to relearn information may become bored and stressed, letting their work suffer as well.


    Grab this free template: A Template to Carry Out an eLearning Audience Analysis

    Read: How to Research Your Target Audience

    #3) Teaching the Right Skills the Wrong Way

    While training is a great way to address many problems and skill gaps within a company, it is not always the answer. Often, training is thrown at an issue once it has already become urgent. A kind of panic sets in as a problem becomes critical, and training is the go-to answer. 

    Determine if training is really the best option by asking yourself these questions:

    • What is the actual problem this training is attempting to solve?
    • What are the causes of the issue and are they actually being caused by internal or external forces?
    • In what ways will training address these causes?
    • Was training already attempted and, if so, what was the outcome?
    • If there was previous training, why did it fail and what could have been done to make it better?
    • Are there things already in place that we can utilize to rectify this issue?

    Even if you do decide on training, there are still questions that need to be answered to decide on what type of training would be most effective.

    Look at these questions before starting to formulate a training plan:

    • Will people need to refer to the information being presented in an ongoing way? Elearning is a great option for this over the option of live training which relies too heavily on learners’ ability to take notes. 
    • Do we need formal or informal training? If we are talking about a small group, a one-on-one or more informal style training might be best especially if the group is already highly skilled but needs to pick up a skill or two. A large group, like an entire sales force, might need more structured training with built-in social features.
    • Where and how should this training take place? Classroom training can be the answer when you need to demonstrate something for example. Elearning or blended learning gives the most flexibility and can be used effectively for a large group. 

    With these things in mind, you can go on to be a better course designer, always keeping what is needed in mind as you create.  We hope this will also give you the tools to convince clients of the need for needs analysis and how this will help them and their company in the long run.

    Other Recommended Reads:

    visual design crash course

     


     References:

    Learning needs analysis and evaluation, 2nd ed., Francis Bee & Roland Bee London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2003

    Training: It’s Not Always the Answer, Bill Stear, 2005

    TRAINING NEEDS ASSESSMENT. A Must for Developing an Effective Training Program, By Judith Brown, Director of Research

    Related Posts

    6 Proven Principles to Create Memorable eLearning Courses

    Picture this: You've invested countless hours in creating a brilliant, engaging eLearning course. It's chock full of relevant information, interesting modules, and interactive quizzes. You've done your part, but there's one question that haunts you as you stare at your masterpiece:"Will my learners remember any of this a month from now?" It's a fair question. After all, the true measure of successful training is not just the initial understanding, but also the longevity of the knowledge imparted. So, how do we ensure that the valuable information you're providing sticks in the minds of your workforce long after they've logged off the learning platform? Understanding how human memory works is pivotal in this quest. But to truly elevate your eLearning strategies, we need to delve into the ways that can help learners not only acquire but also retain new knowledge effectively. This pursuit leads us to six key premises that can transform your eLearning from a fleeting moment of instruction to a memorable learning journey. Join us as we navigate the fascinating world of learning retention, tapping into cognitive science, cutting-edge research, and proven strategies to help your workforce remember what they've learned. For training leaders like you, this blog will be your guidebook, transforming the way you think about eLearning and its potential to empower your workforce in a whole new way.

    How To Avoid Designing Cluttered eLearning Screens

    How many times have you found yourself sitting through a course, feeling bewildered and lost because you couldn't determine what to focus on? And how often have you strained your eyes during a presentation, attempting to decipher the minuscule content squeezed into a tiny space at the bottom of the screen, from your distant seat in the fifth row? Unfortunately, these dreadful experiences are all too familiar. Even the most well-intentioned instructional designers have been guilty of creating cluttered and chaotic eLearning screens, where the intended message gets drowned amidst a chaotic mix of images, icons, text, charts, and graphs. This mishmash of visual elements not only overwhelms the screen but also tests the patience of learners, hindering their ability to grasp meaningful concepts from the course. To alleviate this issue, here are seven effective strategies to help you declutter your eLearning screens:

    9 Ways to Use Video in Your Online Training Courses

    In today's digital age, attention spans are becoming shorter, and learners crave captivating content that resonates with them. That's why incorporating video into eLearning courses has become more vital than ever before. It's not just a trend; it's a transformational tool that L&D leaders must embrace to engage their learners and drive meaningful knowledge retention