Create a training and development plan/Analysis Phase

Analysis is a crucial first step to developing effective training and development offerings. You will determine what training is needed, or if it's needed at all. You'll analyze the needs of your trainees. You'll also consider the resources and/or constraints of your environment. This module contains useful resources and practice for working through the Analysis Phase of your training plan.

Learning Objectives

Describe a business need for training.
Analyze a performance gap in terms of desired performance versus actual performance.
Determine if training is the best solution to close a performance gap.
Analyze your intended audience and their learning needs.

Why it Matters

Why is it important to analyze the needs and characteristics of the people you intend to teach? A narrative (example or scenario) that fleshes out the problem and/or hooks learners by resonating with their experience(s) might be useful.

Why is it important to analyze the needs of your learners? To answer that, think about your own experiences as a learner. Have you ever had to attend training that you felt simply did not apply to you? Perhaps the training covered a topic that was not relevant to your role in an organization. Or maybe the training treated you as a novice when in fact you were closer to an expert. How useful was the training to you? Did you leave the training feeling motivated or irritated? If an organization spent resources to develop that training and have you attend, did the organization make a good investment?

Learning Resources

The ADDIE Analysis Phase, by J. Clark Gardner. This video provides a fun and easy to understand introduction to the Analysis phase of the ADDIE design model.

Analysis in Instructional Design, by Don Clark.

Determining Business Needs in Instructional Systems Design, by Don Clark. This web article explains the “how and why” of describing training needs in terms of business needs. It describes a technique for mapping learning initiatives to business outcomes called “impact mapping.” It also describes how to design backwards from business objectives to training.

Is Training Really the Answer? Ask the Flowchart, by Cathy Moore. This article and flowchart tool will help you answer the question "Is training really the answer," as well as identify potential alternatives to training.

Practice Activity

For this practice activity, please read the scenario and then use the template to complete the Analyze Phase. After completing the Analyze Phase, compare your work to that of a completed Analyze Phase example. This Practice activity closely mirrors the structure of the associated assessment in the University Learning Store.

Scenario: Requested training on employee professionalism

North-South Transport is a unionized transportation company. Its mission is to attract and keep customers by providing best in class transportation services and fostering a profitable, disciplined culture of safety, service, and trust.

Janet Parker is the sole human resources representative at North-South Transport. A recent incident involving the use of employee email has brought a long-simmering issue of professionalism to the forefront. This latest incident began when one employee, Denise Miller, emailed another employee, Frank Wright, asking for a professional recommendation. In his response, Frank stated that he was unable to provide a recommendation due to a laundry list of complaints against Denise. In describing his complaints, Frank made it clear that he believed the quality of her work was sub-par, that she had failed to contribute to the organization, and he implied that she had only been hired because she had friends in leadership positions at the organization. Frank’s reply, harsh as it was, may have gone unnoticed except that, instead of simply replying to her email, he forwarded his response to the company-wide email address. Everyone in the company got to see his admonishment of his colleague.

The company has had a long history of questionable emails sent company-wide. Often, one employee’s comments in a company-wide email are perceived as a slight by another employee and the offended employee feels compelled to defend himself or herself via a “reply all” email. In the past, the owner of North-South Transport has preferred to address these incidents of unprofessionalism through the union representatives rather than get directly involved. That seems to be an unspoken arrangement that union leaders prefer as well. Union representative have addressed these incidents by clearly defining, for all union employees, what is okay to communicate via company-wide email and what is not okay. Union representatives have also reviewed with employees the company’s protocols for resolving disputes. Union representatives had conducted such a review of company protocols only six months prior to the email incident involving Denise Miller and Frank Wright, both of whom participated in the review and indicated that they understood the communication protocols.

The owner believes this latest company-wide email went too far and needs to be addressed directly by leadership. Furthermore, he believes this incident is indicative of an organizational culture that lacks professionalism. He is concerned that the lack of professionalism could be hurting company morale and productivity, as employees waste time and energy on pointless workplace drama. The owner wrote an email to Janet Parker, the human resources representative, asking her to develop training about professionalism in the workplace. The owner suggested topics for training, but gave Janet leeway to make the final decisions regarding topics. He suggested the following.

What’s okay to send in a company-wide email versus what’s not okay to send.
Email etiquette.
A general primer on workplace professionalism.
Conflict resolution, including company protocols for resolving disputes among employees. This one is complicated by the fact that the protocols differ for union versus non-union employees (many of the administrative jobs are non-union). Union employees, such as Denise Miller and Frank Wright, are supposed to involve their union representatives as part of the dispute process.
Spelling and grammar.

Administrative employees, who make up about 1/3 of the company workforce, are co-located at the company’s headquarters. However, the remaining 2/3 of the company’s workers are spread around the country and work varying schedules. Getting everyone together for training at the same time and in the same place would be a difficult and costly undertaking.

The company’s union employees tend to bristle at direct involvement from management. That, combined with the fact that employees have received related training from their union representative in the not-too-distant past, leads Janet to suspect that employees will not look kindly on this new training requirement. Employees are busy, and this training needs to fit alongside their duties (in other words, no time is being set aside for this training).

Janet has the following options regarding training formats: several face to face workshops, training on the company LMS, a synchronous online video webinar, or (other?).

Janet also knows she needs a way to assess whether or not employees have acquired the desired knowledge and are able to apply it. She is considering the following options.

She could facilitate role playing exercises.
She could administer a large multiple choice exam, which would be easy using the learning management system.
She could ask trainees to sign something stating they understand the company-wide email policies.
She could write scenarios and ask employees to apply policies.
Some combination of the above, or another option not listed?

In order to prevent future company-wide email incidents, Janet undertakes to understand what caused past incidents, including the most recent incident involving Denise and Frank.

Frank made “comments” to management before about Denise, but felt like he wasn’t heard and that nothing was done. (Maybe Frank could use training on chain of command or protocols for grievances)
Appears functional managers might have been lax about fostering/enforcing professionalism in their respective environments.

Review Questions

Create a bank of quiz questions about ADDIE Analyze phase terminology, concepts, and scenarios that are relevant in the context of HRM training and development.

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