The concept of Training Needs Assessment

Armstrong (2009, p. 4) reports that ‘human resources management (HRM) is a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization’s most valued assets: the people working there, who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of its objectives’. Training should be systematic and organised. If not, it fails to identify the needs of the employees. TNA aims to answer the questions: who must be trained in an

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organization? What must they be trained in? And when and where will the training take place? Goldstein (1997) and Goldstein & Ford (2002, pp. 22-23) recommend that TNA should consist of three levels of assessment to determine the needs that training can fulfil: the first level is organizational analysis, which focuses on identifying where in the organization training is needed; second level is task analysis (knowledge, skills and abilities – KSA analysis), which aims to identify the content of the training, i.e. what an employee must do in order to perform competently; lastly is individual analysis, which determines how well each employee is carrying out the various tasks that make up their job. Training needs can be defined as: a shortage of skills or abilities, which could be reduced or eliminated by means of training and development (University of London, 2006). A training needs assessment is therefore the process of identifying the skills deficiency and associated training needs. The idea behind training needs assessment is that only when there is a match between training needs and the content of training, beneficial outcomes to organizational performance can be realized (Van Eerdeet et al., 2008). Every training programme begins with an analysis of training needs. Identifying the training needs of employees is considered to be essential to designing an effective training programme and is contributory to the organization’s training strategy (Vijayalakshmi, 2012).

Muya et al. (2003) state that appropriate training can only be developed if the training needs assessment is identified carefully. This requires an organization to understand and anticipate the future skills needed by its staff. Enshassi et al. (2007) strongly recommend that attendance on training programmes should be mandatory for novice project managers, prior to them being allowed to take charge of construction sites. However, many businesses face the prospect of wasting valuable training budgets because they do not know how to identify their internal needs accurately, and so cannot design the most suitable training and enhancement programmes (Denby, 2010; Chapman, 2000). Other significant barriers to training needs identified from previous studies include a lack of high quality standardised training programmes and a dearth of support materials, resources, expertise and technical assistants (Clover et al., 1999; Wang, 2008). Inadequate training needs assessment leads to frequent problems on the construction project site management. Therefore, it is fundamental for construction companies to provide their employees with an appropriate training needs assessment, in order to bring up to date the relevant skills and knowledge for their employees and to meet the challenges of today’s dynamic and complex business environment. Training Needs Assessment is a vital part of the training design process, in which endeavours are made to reduce the ‘gap’ by finding out what needs to be learnt (Hassan & Stephenson, 2005).

Without TNA, there can be no solid prognosis to evaluate whether the training process completed was correctly designed (Odusami et al., 2007; Ejowhomu et al., 2006; Hassan, 2005). According to one author: ‘Inadequate needs assessment can result in inappropriate and ineffectual interventions which could either have no impact or have a deleterious impact on the actual performance problem’ (Wagonhurst, 2002, p 78 ). Training needs assessment is an ongoing process of gathering data to determine what training needs exist so that training can be developed to help the organization accomplish its objectives (Brown, 2002). Furthermore, the idea behind training needs analysis is that only when there is a match between training needs and the content of training, beneficial outcomes to organizational performance can be realized (Van Eerde, et al., 2008). In order to do this an efficient method of carrying out a TNA must be designed to provide the necessary information for measuring the most desirable skills employees need (Shehu & Akintoye, 2008). Therefore, a TNA is likely to play a major role in the development of workforce skills and especially of managerial skills (Liska et al., 2000; Pappas, 2004; CURT, 2007; Marzouk, 2009; PADCO, 2006; UN-Habitat, 2007).

The competitive market in the construction industry has increased the need for managers and engineers involved in the management of construction projects to have superior skills and competencies (Ruiz, 2004; Forde & Mackenzie, 2005). Hence, the training needs of the construction workforce have become an essential issue among construction firms worldwide in order to promote project effectiveness (Teixeira & Pires, 2006; Ruiz, 2004; Forde & Mackenzie, 2005). In Iraq training remains the most crucial issue facing all Iraqi industry these days. Across the country, insufficient emphasis is placed on training staff to meet the new challenges of the technological changes in industry. Regrettably, training is often given a low priority in the Iraqi construction industry, and this has resulted in construction companies taking an ‘ad hoc’ approach to the provision of training (UN-Habitat, 2007). On other hand, the construction industry in developed countries has given more attention to training as a strategic factor in its long-term vitality and growth, thus improving the company employees’ performance and keeping abreast of any technological changes to update their skills and knowledge (Teixeira & Pires, 2006). It is be difficult to find much academic literature on TNA in developing countries. However, there are a number of case studies, which report how organizations or industries have conducted these assessments (Cekada, 2011). Anderson (2000) emphasized that a needs assessment is ‘the starting point in the training processes’. It is the stage at which an organisation’s needs could be identified, thus creating the foundations for an efficient training effort. A training needs assessment can be tailored to suit individual 6 2

organisations to determine: what kind of training programmes are needed for its employees; who needs to be included and what conditions the training will occur under (Ghufli, 2012; Van Eerde et al., 2008). Finally, TNA has become the concern of every proactive manager, who uses it for developing and implementing various practical solutions for individuals, work groups, and organizations (Gupta et al., 2007; Noe, 2001; Patton, 2002).

Figure 2-2 Training needs gap

Source adopt by researcher: A simplified diagram showing an IDEF process representation of the cycle of needs achievement and the positioning of TNA in this cycle.