Identification of Training Needs of Employees in an Organization

Identification of Training Needs of Employees in an Organization. Training need identification is the most important and the foremost step in the whole process of training and development. Training helps to fill out the gaps and bridge them between what is required and what they already have. What they require means that what is required in terms of skills and abilities by the job and their role in the organization and what they have means what they are already possessing in them in terms of skills, capabilities, talents and abilities. These have a direct link with the social skills and the surroundings of the person as they are a part of society which has a major impact on them.

So, there is a proper and due need of identification of the training needs on the behalf of the employees. These in general terms means to identify the areas where the employees lack skills and abilities and which needs to be improved so that the person can perform better on the job and achieve the departmental, individual and the organizational goals as well. These are in direct link with both the requirements of the organization as well as the individual’s requirements.

There are many methods which have been proposed in order to train the employees with the overall aim of improvements in the productivity and efficiency. People can do job analysis, performance appraisal, analysis of the difficulties of the jobs in order to identify the training needs among the employees. The training need identification is a comprehensive process that needs to be divided into 3 broad categories which have been mentioned as:

Organizational analysis: these mean to analyse the full organization in a more comprehensive manner. One can do this in terms of missions, goals, objectives, resources, culture, ethics, environment and many more factors. This analysis helps to identify the deficiencies among the whole organization and the means to overcome them have been defined. The sub parts have been discussed as :

• Objectives analysis: the overall analysis begins with analysis of the goals and the objectives of the business which can be short term as well as the long term. Long term is usually of more than one year and these can be strategies for overall organization or some specific departments. Short term objectives are of usually less than one year and involve proper and thorough analysis of the internal and the external factors affecting them. Further they can be of general and specific nature as well. General can be of not concerning with any particular brand or product whereas specific can be related to some products, brands or departments as well. The objectives set must be time based and measurable which means that the goals set in advance should be such that they can be achieved in later stages of life. There must be proper planning at the time of setting the goals so that there is no difficulty in the later stages.
• Resource utilization: this involves analysing the human and other physical resources so that one must come to know about the proper implementation and evaluate their role in achieving the overall objectives. There must be proper utilization in such a manner that there is no wastage related to the resources and the overall goals are being achieved. This will reduce the levels of inefficiency and improve the productivity of the organization. One can even examine the input and output levels of the whole system. There must be proper and due focus on the human resources as well as they are the ones who are going to use the other resources and help in achieving the overall objectives.
• Scanning of environment: the environment can be scanned in two categories as internal and external. The external environment involves the opportunities and the threats. The opportunities are the chances of the success in the coming future whereas the threats can be termed as the probabilities of losses if not tackled properly by the organizations. These are even influenced by the socio cultural activities which mean that environmental factors play a crucial role in achieving the goals. The factors such as exchange rates, economic policies, government policies, rates of interest definitely have some effect on the businesses. Some of the factors can be controlled and some cannot be controlled by the organizations.
• Climate analysis: a thorough analysis must be done on the behalf of the organization so that there is a cool environment in the company. The relations must be cordial among all the employees and even with the superiors. There must be proper communication and coordination between the people in a company. The attitude of the members must be fair and good enough and all the practices must be ethical in the organization. There must be no duplication of efforts which will lead to wastage of time nothing else. Such things even have a positive or a negative influence on the training programs as well.

Analysis of job: the term is also called the job analysis. This involves proper study of all the elements of all the components in a job. There must be a proper match between the job requirements and the skills of the person doing the job. This also involves studying the conditions under which the job is to be performed. These can be well measured if the standards of the job are known by the people so that they can easily measure the tasks in both quantity and quality. This helps the employee to match the skills and achieve the goals accordingly.

Analysis of people doing the job: this involves studying the man who is going to perform the job in terms of the skills and competencies and the abilities required to perform the job. The knowledge and attitude plays a crucial role here in this step. Features such as job attention and absenteeism play a crucial role here in this. The job requirements much match the skills of the people. A detailed analysis is very necessary in order to achieve the overall goals.