Helping to identify your training requirements

Education and training needs are more correctly means to an end than properties, states, processes, events or relations which can be discovered by observation and which relate to people. In general one will discover, human, technical and organisational skills required when conducting a TNA.

The development of TNA styles can be very broadly equated to the development throughout the 20th century of management and organisational theories.

The role of TNA is used to evaluate the opportunities for organisation members to enhance their effectiveness for the organisation by undertaking an education and training programme tailored to their needs. The role is to articulate the training needs of specific groups of employees or organisation members as they perform within the organisation’s processes.

There will be at least 3 parties involved –

• Those carrying out the TNA
• Those who commissioned the TNA
• The groups focused on during the TNA

Stage 1 – SQMC’s Research Methods

Company Documentary Search

Many types of organisation documents may exist. These might include, for example:

Annual Reports / Business Plans
Organisation Charts
Job Descriptions / Specifications
Reports on Labour Turnover / Absenteeism
Succession Plans
Procedural Manuals/Audits
Accident reports etc.

Equally, some organisations may have no up to date records at all! SQMC are therefore prepared for considerable variation in the quantity and quality of organisational documentation.

Let us consider the use to which such documents can be put...

Annual Reports / Business Plans

Organisations of many sorts produce annual reports and business plans. They may be as formal as those published by large public limited companies, down to simple summaries of the past year’s activities from a local voluntary organisation. The value of such reports should not be underestimated just because they often take little more than an hour or two to digest! They often provide a useful overview of the positive aspects of the organisation in question. Much material may have been collected to provide such a summary and is therefore a means of short-circuiting what might otherwise take you much longer to find out. Such reports therefore contribute to the overview of the organisation.

What we do

We don’t just read such reports. We make notes on aspects which appear to be either particularly significant or to be surprising. Such features may be worth checking out subsequently. Finally, we make sure we have either made sufficient notes, or highlighted key sections to enable us to quickly extract useful information when it comes to the report writing stage.

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