Getting The Best From Your Team

Learning and talent development are key aspects of sustained organisational performance, not just tools for HR, and creating an effective learning strategy is never more crucial than in the current times of constrained finance, restructuring and redundancies. Identifying your teams training and learning needs should be at the heart of everything you do.

The use of Training Needs Analysis or Skills Gap Analysis is basically a health check on the skills, talent and capabilities of your organisation. It is the systematic gathering of information to find out where there are gaps in the existing skills, knowledge and attitudes of your employees. It involves collecting information about existing employees’ capabilities you’re your organisations demands for skills, and the analysis of how this will impact the future plans for your business.  It should always flow from the business strategy, and its aim is the production of a plan for the organisation to ensure that there is sufficient capability to sustain business performance.

Why should I identify my teams skills gaps?

Careful analysis of needs is important because:

• Organisational performance depends on having the right people, in the right

jobs, at the right time.

•  Providing learning opportunities enables staff to achieve personal and

career goals and increases employee engagement.

•  Well-planned training is an effective retention strategy, particularly for those

identified as talent.

•  Having a clear idea of what needs to be learned and the outcomes

expected allows you to measure the success of your staff training.

How do I know what skills they will need?

Specific skills needs will differ between businesses, but certain skills are required by most customer-focused businesses:

•  IT - are staff making the most of your hardware and software systems?
•  Sales and marketing - are sales staff reaching the clients that matter,

building relationships and closing sales?

•  Procurement and buying - are buyers managing contracts effectively?
•  Finance - are your records being kept in order so you can monitor

performance and meet your tax and other obligations?

•  Customer service - are your staff trained to deal with customers so that

you're likely to retain and increase the business you do with them?

•  Management and leadership - can your senior managers, yourself

included, lead, motivate and get the best out of your staff? 

Once you have identified any skills gaps in your business you can start to address them. This might involve recruiting new employees, but it makes good business sense to see if your existing staff have untapped potential you can utilise. Developing the skills of existing staff improves their job satisfaction and can be a cost-effective way of meeting your skills needs.

What are the steps involved?

Knowing what jobs will be done, now and in the future, is the first step. Then, for each category of employees covered:

•  What capabilities will be required to carry out the job? (the person

specification)

•  What capabilities do existing employees possess? (a formal or informal

skills analysis)

•  What are the gaps between existing capabilities and the new requirements?

(the learning specification).

 How do I go about collecting the information? 

Having planned exactly what data you want to collect, the next stage is to decide how the information can be collected. Some possible ways are:

•  Company Documentation – for example business plans, objectives and new

work standards, job descriptions and person specifications

•  Interviews with line managers - these will often be primary sources of

information on plans, work organisation and changes, or will expand on the facts available in the documentation.

• Existing data, for example on an HR database
• Appraisal and performance management documentation.

If you work within an SME, you may choose to undertake skills gap analysis on a smaller scale.  If this is the case, don’t forget to explore sources of funding - for smaller enterprises government support is available particularly around apprenticeship internships and student projects can also provide capability and skills.  You may also wish to look into flexible learning options if having key staff absent on training courses is not an attractive prospect for you.

 How do I use the results?

The value is not in collecting the information, but in what you do with that information to support the development of your business.  You will likely get a number of outputs, all of which will become an important part of developing your staff:

•  A report of overall training needs for the organisation or department.

To use as the basis of a Learning and Talent Development Strategy or be part of the business planning process.

•  Prioritisation of the learning needs identified.  A discussion with

The management will give guidance on which gaps are most critical.

•  Personal development plans.  Plans for personal learning can be aligned

with the resources available.

Pentland Training can assist you with identifying your teams training needs.  Why not get in touch and find out more.

Comments

[edf]

It is very important to slow down before every step and analyze all the processes, requirements, freelance writer jobs and strategy. It will show you the whole picture