Training Needs Analysis
Before anything is written, we establish what each role genuinely needs to be able to do, what your people can do now, and the distance between the two. It is the shortest stage of the work and the one that decides whether the rest of it is scoped correctly.
Most training is scoped by whoever happens to be writing it.
Without an established need, the person producing the material decides what goes in. They tend to include everything they know, because leaving something out feels like a risk. The result is a course that covers the whole system when the role touches four screens, or a procedure that assumes knowledge nobody has.
A needs analysis moves that decision earlier and makes it explicit. It separates what a person must know from what they only need to be able to look up, and what they never need to see at all. That single distinction removes most of the bulk from corporate training without removing anything anyone uses.
What We Assess
The analysis is done role by role against the process as it is actually performed, not against the job description.
- The capability each role requires, expressed as tasks the person must be able to complete rather than topics they must be exposed to
- What people can currently do, established from the mapping interviews and from the supervisors who see the work daily
- Whether each gap is a knowledge gap, a skill gap, a tooling gap, or simply that nobody told them - the four have entirely different remedies
- What must be memorized, what must be findable within a minute, and what can be left out of the material altogether
- Which gaps are worth closing, ranked by what they cost rather than by who raised them
- The written specification that the procedures and training are subsequently built against
How the Analysis Runs
Start from the mapped process
Capability requirements are drawn from what the work genuinely involves. Where the process has not been mapped, that comes first - see process mapping and documentation.
Define the requirement per role
For each role touching the process, a plain list of what that person must be able to do unaided. No competency frameworks unless you already use one.
Establish the current position
Drawn from the interviews, from supervisors, and where it is useful, from watching the task performed. Self-assessment alone is unreliable in both directions.
Classify each gap
Knowledge, skill, tooling or communication. A tooling gap does not get solved by a training course, and treating it as one is a common and expensive mistake.
Produce the specification
A short document stating what will be built, for whom, at what depth, and what is deliberately excluded. This is what the procedures and training are written against.
When You Need One
- Training exists but people still ask a colleague, and are right to
- Onboarding takes noticeably longer than it should and nobody can say which part is slow
- You are about to commission documentation or training and have no agreed scope for it
- A system is changing and you do not know which roles are affected or how deeply
- The same errors recur after training has been delivered, which usually means the gap was never a knowledge gap
- Cross-training is discussed regularly and never quite happens
Common Questions
What is a training needs analysis?
A structured assessment of what each role must be able to do, what the people in that role can currently do, and the gap between the two. It produces the specification that documentation and training are then built against, rather than leaving scope to be guessed.
What is the difference between a training needs analysis and a skills gap analysis?
They overlap heavily. A skills gap analysis usually looks at capability across a workforce, often for hiring or workforce planning. A training needs analysis is narrower and more practical: it establishes what training is actually required, for whom, and at what depth. We work at the second level, tied to a specific process.
Why not just write the training first?
Because scope has to come from somewhere. Training written without an established need is scoped by whoever writes it, which is why so much corporate material manages to be simultaneously too long and insufficient. The analysis decides what goes in and, more usefully, what stays out.
How long does it take?
For a single function, usually one to three weeks once the process is mapped. It is deliberately a short stage; its value is in the decisions it settles, not in the length of the report.
Do you need a process map first?
It makes the analysis far more accurate. You can assess capability against a job description, but a job description describes the intended role. A current-state map describes the work as performed, which is what people actually need to be able to do.
Which role would you start with?
Tell us which part of the work is hardest to hand over and we will tell you honestly whether an analysis would help.