Training Needs Analysis Template
Onboarding staff offers a unique opportunity to welcome new ideas while sharing insights into your company. However, understanding the knowledge, skills, and abilities of that staff is crucial for their success. Performing a training needs analysis can help employees (both new and veteran) adapt to changing market needs, thereby helping companies maintain a competitive edge.
This template provides a way to assess an employee’s training needs for both new hires and those moving into new roles. You can also utilize the training analysis during annual reviews to assess existing gaps in skills and knowledge, or to identify potential training opportunities and build a personal development plan.
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Training Gap Analysis Template
Complete a gap analysis of your employee training program to identify what it’s missing. Use the information gleaned from the analysis to effectively support your team so they can meet milestones. Complete the dedicated template areas for role, skill, description, ranking, and training needed for each employee. Use the target completion date to formulate a plan.
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Staff Training Plan Template
A team or department manager can use this template to document the progress of their entire staff. Complete the multiple charts to gain a holistic view of your team: Track knowledge areas, award competency scores, and list formal trainings and meetings (as well as who has attended them or completed the necessary tasks). This template enables you to monitor both hard and soft skills of each employee. Find training plan templates for annual, monthly, weekly, or daily training by reading Free Training Plan Templates for Business Use.
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Free Employee Performance Review Template
Employee performance reviews (whether done weekly, monthly, or annually) are a useful way to track progress and identify areas for improvement. This basic performance review template offers a list of employee skills and qualities, accompanied by a rating system from poor to excellent. While not an in-depth, qualitative review, this template can provide a snapshot of employee performance and guide the in-person review. Use the section for comments or additional notes to list significant accomplishments or future goals.
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Basic SWOT Matrix Excel Template
Exploring strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) can be a critical business planning tool. A SWOT analysis examines these factors for a given business, project, or personal objective, and can provide a way to navigate internal and external forces that support or hinder meeting objectives. This SWOT matrix template provides the basic 2x2 layout and includes a column for measuring the significance of each item in your SWOT categories. Use the additional worksheets in this Excel template for supporting data or other analyses.
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Customer or Client Needs Analysis Template
Understanding the needs of your customers while building a relationship with them is critical to the success of your business. Use the format in this template to create a plan to engage with your customers about the product or service you will perform. There are areas provided for reviewing the customers expectations, including project length and cost. This template also offers space to make adjustments as needed for your product/service agreement.
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Technology Needs Analysis Template
Assessing the growing or evolving needs of software or hardware helps your company or IT department determine how teams are utilizing available inventory. This template provides a scale of use, as well as an area for staff to analyze projects that require additional support. Use the space provided to acknowledge what technology is no longer in use or needs support/upgrades, or areas where it’s time to consider new inventory needs.
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Data Needs Analysis Template
Some projects require data to tell a story or guide decision making. Complete a data needs analysis to correctly identify the data your project needs or as a way to describe the data and outcomes. The template provides sections for discussion, displaying data, and writing assessments of how this data supports or disputes a project hypothesis.
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Business Needs Analysis Template
The business needs analysis template will help you evaluate your company and teams. Use the allotted areas in this template to identify the state of your company, including any barriers, challenges, or areas for growth. The free template outlines performance and competitive advantages your organization may face.
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Organizational Needs Analysis Template
Perform an organizational needs analysis to outline what your team needs in order to succeed. This template provides space for business information, company goals and requirements, barriers, and essential skill assessments to paint a picture of what’s required to accomplish goals. Once you identify you need to do, you can create a plan that you can execute to achieve those goals.
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Market Needs Analysis Template
Understanding your competitive advantage in the market or your industry can help a business succeed. As the market evolves, evaluating your advantages on an ongoing basis is critical for decision making. This market needs analysis template provides space for you to collect and document market research, market trends, strategies, and marketing options.
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What Is a Statement of the Problem?
Typically one to two sentences, a problem statement outlines issues your company or team may be experiencing in a project, product, or service. Only include factual data and information so that the statement is clear, concise, and aimed at your target audience. Creating this statement allows you to focus on one area while conducting an assessment of what’s needed to solve that problem.
A problem statement will outline the negative aspects of your process or product, and explain its importance. After writing a problem statement, you can do a deeper dive into the issue. For example, if employees who forget to pick up print jobs from the printer are wasting company resources, a problem statement might be stated like this: Toner and paper is often wasted on print jobs that are not picked up by staff. This creates additional discarded waste and increased costs for our company.
What Is a Statement of Need?
A statement of need, or needs statement, outlines a problem to solve and provides the evidence to justify deeper analysis. Typically, the need statement follows a problem statement with data and examples. An example statement of need might read: Unused print jobs account for 25 percent of all print jobs, costing the company $3,000 annually, plus the additional toner expense and recycling waste.
What Is a Needs Analysis for a Company?
A needs analysis is a formal process for identifying, evaluating, or reviewing the needs of an organization or a group of people. By focusing on the future and looking at the gap between "real" and "ideal” circumstances or “expected” versus “current” performance of a project or team, a needs analysis supports associated solutions by better channelling limited resources and time.
A typical needs analysis will include the following sections:
- Background of the company
- Desired result and expected outcomes desire
- Current performance of the company
- Explanation of the deficiency
- Solutions that address the deficiencies
- Implementation of solutions that have timelines and a way to follow up on outcomes
There are a variety of ways to conduct an analysis, including literature reviews, questionnaires, group discussion, studies of work samples, or through records, reports, and data. You can apply a needs analysis for improving the workforce in an organization, creating a business direction, serving your customer base, and assessing your market potential.
Follow these basic steps to identify what you should consider before starting an analysis. Meet with key stakeholders to form a consensus, as your results may require resources that you may eventually need to secure.
- Step 1: Identify the logistics for performing your analysis. Solve the who, what, when, where, and how.
- Step 2: Identify your goals for performing the analysis. What are your problem statement and need statement? Create SMART objectives with this template.
- Step 3: Identify the difference you want to see. What is the desired outcome for this change?
With evolving markets and the changing economy, performing a needs analysis will allow you to make the appropriate adjustments to your business, team, department, or project. Needs analyses are simple and quick ways to describe and document areas of need such as staff training, customer or clients project needs, or new technology acquisitions. Ultimately, a needs analysis allows you to take out the assumptions of those in decision-making power, and provides concrete data on the need.
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