Training Needs Assessment

Training Needs Assessment

The opportunity to conduct a training needs assessment for Wealth Management Group (WMG) offers a chance to transform the efficiency of workers at the firm. The process will involve an analysis of the needs and perceptions of all the stakeholders at the firm. The purpose of the exercise is to identify the training need that will result in the most significant impact on the performance of the organization. A preliminary observation of the organization shows a deliberate staffing strategy that factors diversity in employment.  The exercise of the needs assessment will follow the identification of the need for training, consultation of the stakeholders, and collection of the relevant information to guide the intervention process.

Step 1: Concern for Training

The process of needs assessment starts with a concern for training by the organization. Peter, the newly appointed manager for the position of Director of Training and Development at the firm, seeks to develop a relationship-based administration. Peter’s concerns align with the management’s desire to develop a relationship-focused firm to achieve its strategic objectives of focus on clients and innovating for the future.  In this regard, Peter has already initiated the first step of identifying the need for training by talking to selected employees in confidence. The gesture demonstrates his belief that exercise is an ideal practice for organizational improvement. The organization has employed a diverse talent pool and must galvanize this resource to achieve efficiency in the delivery of multicurrency solutions, portfolio management, and other functions under its operational scope.  A diverse workforce promotes professionalism and engenders a culture of trust. However, managers at the firm must guard against the perception that it favors employees from ethnic or cultural backgrounds. The organization can tap into the diversity that her employees bring to the company, and this calls for training.

Step 2: Importance

The second step involves an assessment of the importance of the need for training at the firm. The consultant recognizes the need to foster a harmonious working environment at WMG, as proposed by the manager. The concern is central to the company’s theme that states, “To be the leader in client relationships.” The company believes in the instincts and talents of her employees and commits to leverage them to achieve this ideal. WMG also values teamwork as a pre-requisite for client satisfaction. Accountability is also a critical aspect of WMG, and the company holds that it does not break promises because this is what the clients expect. In this regard, the firm must proactively pursue relationship-building among her staff as a priority. The recent addition to their team by about 600 employees creates the urgency of training needs assessment to facilitate the adaptation of the recruits to the company’s culture. Apart from different cultural identities, the employees come from diverse generations ranging from the baby boomers born just after World War II and Generation Y below the age of 25 years. The organization must recognize the different perspectives that these employees hold and emphasize common factors for an enhanced relationship at work. Although Peter is not sure about the details on the training regarding relationships, he has committed to developing an organization based on a climate of trust and mutual respect. Having recognized the centrality of the need for training on the organization’s goals, the trainers will advance to the next step in the need analysis process.

Step 3: Consulting the stakeholders

Organizational training targets to create the change that will significantly contribute to achieving the objectives of an enterprise. In this regard, the training consultant must ensure that he realizes the participation of all the stakeholders. The most significant stakeholders in the process are the employees. Although the manager has initiated the process, it cannot yield substantial results unless the end-users embrace it as a useful process for effectiveness in performing their duties. Although Peter has already talked to a few employees about their perception of the organization, the consultant will conduct an independent study. The researcher will speak to several workers derived from the different generations represented on a confidentiality basis. The trainer hopes to choose the respondents randomly to minimize the chances of bias. The researcher will seek to establish the need for training and gauge whether the workers benefitted from previous initiatives. Besides, the consultant will find out critical issues in interpersonal relationships and the preferred method of preparation. To obtain better outcomes from training, facilitators must adopt methodologies that foster high levels of participation among the trainees.

The trainer will also interact with the management to ascertain their expectations and the level of support they are willing to provide for the process. The management enjoys the power to allocate resources, and through the consultation, the trainer will customize the exercise to the resource capacity available. The management’s interest in the training derives on its ability to achieve trigger more productivity. WMG is a client-focused organization and seeks to enhance its culture towards leadership in client relationships. In this regard, the trainer will interview a few loyal clients to obtain their perception of the organization’s performance on customer relations. The results of this step will enable the trainers to move to the next step that entails the collection of information.

Step 4: Collection of Information

The trainer will collect information at three levels; organization, task-specific, and person/employee-related. According to Mazhisham et al. (2018), organizational analysis determines the performance within an entity and is useful in helping organizations attain their goals. The process promotes a facilitator to establish critical areas for training. Czuma-Imiołczyk (2017) recommends a SWOT analysis to develop the position of an organization in the market.  The tool commonly applies to strategic management to build an organizational strategy.

The consultant will seek to align the training need with the organization’s strategy and objectives. WMG has demonstrated leaning towards establishing harmonious relationships between employees and the management, the firm, and its clientele and among the employees. The process will also ascertain how the organization related to the external environment. Organizations commonly apply Porter’s five forces strategy to establish the relationship between an enterprise and its critical stakeholders. Porter developed an analysis orientation that focused on external stakeholders (Bruijl, 2018). Apart from the treat of existing competitors, porter identified the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, and the risk of new substitutes. The Five Forces Model has gained credence as an ideal strategy to evaluate an organization’s competitiveness objectively. Critics have, however, faulted the approach for concentrating on large organizations and offering little utility for smaller firms (Bruijl, 2018). However, the strategy recognizes the market reality where giant corporations control the activities of emerging firms through monopoly. The trainer will thus conduct both internal and external analysis to obtain a balanced assessment of the organization in the market.

The researcher will also conduct a task analysis to establish the specific competencies required needed for the training. Mazhisham et al. (2018) aver that task analysis analyses the skills, knowledge, and abilities that employees need to perform their tasks. The trainer will obtain the results of the exercise to customize the training material to the needs identified. In this connection, the trainer will establish the target jobs and get a job description and analyze it through a rating scale. He will also survey the existing posts and provide feedback about their alignment to the expectations for the firm.  The trainer will distinguish between the cognitive tasks and the team tasks. Whereas their cognitive tasks focus on the mental processes required to carry out specific duties, team tasks focus on team-based competencies.

The process will advance to person analysis to ascertain the desired performance, determine the gap, and identify the challenges. The process will identify the categories of employees who need training-based ion their efficiency at performing their tasks. The results of this exercise will enable the trainer to develop a specific training curriculum for the exercise.  Training needs assessment helps identify training and non-training needs in developing the human resource in an organization. The trainer, in this regard, identifies interpersonal communication as the training need for WMG.

Training Through Lecture-based Method

Training Topic: Interpersonal Communication

TRAINING OBJECTIVES

1. To equip the trainees at Wealth Management Group (WMG) with knowledge on interpersonal skills
2. To ensure that participants understand the importance of interpersonal communication in maintaining a positive culture at work

• To motivate trainees to know how they can foster interpersonal communication at work and enhance good relations with colleagues

1. To address the challenges that employees face as in the pursuit of interpersonal communication
2. To train participants on techniques to apply to pursue and maintain healthy interpersonal communication at work.

TRAINING OUTCOMES

By the end of the training, participants must be able to: –

1. Appreciate the importance of building healthy relations at work towards achieving effectiveness at work
2. Demonstrate the willingness to pursue interpersonal communication with workers with diverse characteristics at work

• Overcome the biases to interpersonal communication and seek methods of establishing relations with different groups at work

1. Posses the ability to resolve conflict through positive means and promote a culture of trust among colleagues

Defining Interpersonal Communication

Trainer will help learners to understand the meaning of interpersonal communication

It is a process of transmitting messages and the creation of shared understanding among colleagues in an organization

Communication must achieve the objectives of an organization. Workers can use the official communication channels provided by the organization, including the telephone and the email to communicate with their colleagues. Workers can also employ small groups to communicate, especially when they have taken a break from the performance of tasks. The nature of interpersonal communication depends on the nature and complexity of the organization. Interpersonal communication is among the critical competencies for a job candidate (Singh, 2014). Employees can achieve high levels of effectiveness at work, developing active interpersonal communication skills.

Role of Interpersonal Communication

Interpersonal communication ensures that employees obtain feedback during organizational change. Employees will who receive information about impending change at work will develop positive attitudes and embrace the alterations to their work schedules. Besides, workers make better decisions when they anticipate change and adapt to challenges that the process may create.

Interpersonal communication builds a climate of trust and enables workers to try new strategies to improve performance at work. The situation breeds innovation and ensures contributes to the competitiveness of an organization.

Interpersonal communication fosters confidence and builds teamwork. Individuals learn to overcome negative feelings and adopt more positive approaches to conflict resolution at work. Interpersonal communication also helps people tolerate the mistakes of others and create climate of learning. Organization are involved in continuous learning and employees must possess the readiness to accommodate alternative ideas to ensure their effectiveness in performing their roles.  The concept also promotes empathy honesty and transparency at work and helps employees cultivate meaningful relationships (ZHANG, 2018). Learners will explore opportunities for the promotion of positive communication at work.

Barriers to Interpersonal Communication

During this session, the trainer will explore the barriers to positive communication at work

Lack of clarity is one of the major hinderances to positive interpersonal communication. Workers may use different languages and create a breakdown in the communication process. Workers must understand the official communication language and employ terms that create common understanding

Failure of the organization to provide appropriate equipment also contributes to failure to achieve positive outcomes in interpersonal communication. The organization must commit to provide employees with such equipment as tablets and other handsets to facilitate communication. Besides, the organization must create an appropriate venue for transmission of messages between workers and the management.

Poor description of the roles and functions of employees causes confusion and diminishes interpersonal communication. The management must assign workers duties with clear job description and set clear guidelines for delegation to foster a climate of trust (Singh, 2014). Other barriers to communication include the structure of the workstation, the timing of the message, poor relations between the sender and the recipient and failure by the management to process salaries on time (Singh, 2014). Trainees will examine the most common barriers for a brief discussion after the session

Applying interpersonal communication at work

Workers can apply positive communication by maintaining a culture of openness and developing skills in the use of various media.

Workers must practice openness in communication to enhance understanding and avoid ambiguity in their message delivery. Open communication entails honesty, trust, and supportive mannerisms. Roger identifies three components of public discussion as, who communicates, the form in which the sender conveys the message and the nature of the message. In designing communication messages, parties must be mindful of the three levels of superior-subordinate, peer to peer, and subordinate to a superior. Regardless of the direction of communication, the sender must pursue a culture of openness and express their opinions in a precise language.

Workers must also perfect their mastery if the media for communication to transmit appropriate messages. In a workplace scenario, communication mainly takes the forms of email, teleconferencing, video conferencing, and face-to-face interaction. Organizations prefer face-to-face interaction methods as they enable the parties to develop more meaningful experiences through observation of non-verbal communication cues and the ability to customize the message. The communication models adopted at work must promote instant feedback to ensure timely action. The strength of the workers to understand the norms of the various communication tools is critical to the delivery of coherent messages and avoidance of communication breakdown.

Training Methodologies

The trainers will adopt the following techniques in delivering the training

Productive responses- A method where the respondents actively engage in the practice rather than passively watch the facilitator. The tool will be ideal for fostering participation and achieving better outcomes from the exercise.

Blended training- the trainer varies the teaching methods to enrich the training. The facilitator will use both the lecture method and PowerPoint presentation to increase interaction.

The use of Active Practice

Active practice is a technique that allows workers to apply the knowledge obtained in a training exercise to perform a task. To achieve positive outcomes, trainers must design the training process to enable self-regulation and ensure that trainers integrate and assimilate the training content. The trainer will ask participants to practice communication skills in groups to ensure that they understand the concepts. After every activity, the trainers will allocate ten minutes for role-playing and discussions on the topics handled. In this manner, the facilitator will ensure that the learners fully comprehend the meanings behind the concepts.

The trainer will also foster active learning in the training environment to ensure that participants take control of the process. At the beginning of the training, the facilitator will list the trainee expectations for the course. In this regard, the trainer will help participants experiment with such training tasks like role-playing and group discussions. The facilitator will also adopt the procedural instruction method by guiding the trainees on the steps to the performance of functions in achieving interpersonal communication. Besides, the facilitator will create an open learning environment that allows the trainees the liberty to make errors and take full control of their emotions at the workshop. Active learning in traduces dynamism to lectures and creates memorable experiences for both the facilitator and the learners.

Section III; Lesson Plan