I have been asked to develop a Training Needs Survey kind of instrument. My organization is interested in defining the training needs/wants of our organization on a more global basis. I have tried to do some research to find some information on how to write the surveys, but I'm really stuck.

I think it's probably going to be a likert based survey due to the population size. It sounds like we are going to go acorss the entire organization which is over 20,000...and we can define it by organization for those training groups who deal with specific orgs.

I know this is a bit cloudy, but this project has me a bit klerplunked. I've never done anything like this and am at a loss for where to start. Does anyone have any good references that I can use, borrow, or look at? I'm looking for any guidance that I can find on this. In advance, I appreciate any help that anyone can provide.

Before you go off with a likert survey, get some good qualitative data. Do some interviews and maybe an email blast with questions like
- What training do you see we need and why?
- What performance problems do you see that training could fix?
The primary objective of training is to improve performance. So you have to know what the performance gaps are before you can develop training that delivers business results.

References:
If you don't have this one, get it: Making Instruction Work by Robert Mager. It is available in the Mager 6-pack and by itself.
Analyzing Performance Problems by Mager and Pike (also in the 6-pack)
Systematic Design of Instruction by Walter D-i-c-k and Carey

Cyndi,

If you are still looking let me know and I will email you a couple instruments that will help.

Bob Blake
TrainersDirect
blake@trainersdirect.com

CyndiSA.

Well, you could certainly reach out to 20,000 people. I just wouldn't recommend it

Ben is correct about knowing what the performance gaps are...and whether they are a local issue or global trend. It is that knowledge, balanced with organizational goals, that serves as the foundation of a solid learning and development plan.

Here's another way to approach this...

1. Do you have any mechanisms for gathering developmental feedback (not performance appraisals)? I use 360 feedback but you may have something else that works fine.

2. If you have that data it should already point to gaps, trends...etc. If you don't have the data you should get it.

3. Are current training offerings linked to organization goals? You should be able to walk back any training activity to them. Training is a tool that serves the organization. Training for training's sake is not.

Much more to talk about...but let's chew on this first.

Jeff

In conducting your training needs analysis, you may have a variety of data sources available to you. Which data sources you use will depend on a number of factors. These factors include:the level of accuracy you require, the reliability of each data source ,the accessibility of each data source.

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