Making Impactful Learning Experiences
The Importance of a Needs Assessment
If you have been working in the Learning and Development space for pretty much any amount of time, you have no doubt heard something along the lines of: “We need to prove our value to the organization. We have to show that training works!” The reality of L&D is that we will be constantly hearing this refrain now and probably forever.
And, to be fair, we should be!
I know, this is probably not where you were expecting this to go. Usually these conversations end up lamenting how learning is undervalued at the best of times, and outright ignored (or cut entirely) at the worst. I do feel this as much as anyone in Learning and Development, but, can you think of any areas in your organization that don’t have to prove their worth?
Retail teams have to show their sales numbers. Marketing has to show their impact on target populations. What makes L&D so special?
I believe the short answer is that it is hard to prove that training works. The slightly longer answer is that showing the impact of a learning experience has to start with understanding what we are trying to impact. We can’t “make a training” just because.
Being able to demonstrate the value of L&D comes from the evaluation of training, learners, and the organizational impact. To be able to evaluate on multiple levels, we need to know where we are starting from. This is where the needs assessment comes in.
This often happens when training is being requested. In my experience, the people in L&D are here because we want to help. Saying yes is in our nature. While it is true that our customers are our coworkers and friends, we need to ask further questions. In the words of Wendy and James Kirkpatrick (authors of Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation): “Why this training? Why now?”
The answers will probably lead us to what our customers really need. Essentially, what problem does our customer need to solve?
From here we can conduct our needs assessment to determine exactly what the problem is. We can play our consultative role in assisting to solve this problem. Maybe our sales numbers are low because our sales teams need training on how to close the deal. Or perhaps the numbers are low because our sales teams don’t understand our products. These scenarios require different responses. And so blindly following a request for customer service training (which wouldn’t answer either problem) could lead to a low impact situation.
Sometimes we may even find there isn’t a problem that training can fix. If sales are low because incentives are low, no amount of training will solve this. This is another way we end up using L&D resources to little effect.
The power of conducting a proper needs assessment is in that we can help determine the problems we can solve. We know where we are starting from. We can find out where we want to be. We can even give insight to findings outside of what L&D can change.
Proving our value happens when we help our customers overcome their problems and reach their goals. We get to piggyback on their success. We can show that training works when we only engage in training that has a chance to work.
“Hooray! Sales goals are being reached!” A large part of it was making sure we were solving for the actual problem. No longer will “we need a training” be sufficient. Let us conduct our needs assessments. Let us make that constant refrain be to the tune of: Partnering with L&D brings results.
