How to Conduct a Needs Assessment that Gets Results

By Seth Leibler, Ed.D., President & CEO, CEP
Ann W. Parkman, Executive Vice President, CEP
Karen VanKampen, Director, Performance Consulting, CEP

Needs assessments can be valuable tools, if they are done correctly. Not only can they pinpoint training and other performance improvement needs, they can also help you determine practical and realistic solutions that can help your organization achieve the bottom-line business results it requires. This article outlines some common misconceptions about needs assessments, and offers a high-level overview of how you can effectively utilize needs assessments to help you maximize this potentially powerful tool.

Why conduct a needs assessment?

Needs assessments can serve as a valuable tool to help manage the rapid changes taking place within organizations today - including mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring, downsizing, globalization, and technological advances, just to name a few. Needs assessments are appropriate when:

• You have been asked to implement a training solution;
• You have been asked to help with a performance issue; or
• Your organization is implementing a change that will have a large impact on one or more areas.

Many needs assessments are developed by generating a list of competencies required to perform a job well. To develop this list, the needs assessor typically asks the person whose job is being assessed (and/or his or her supervisor) what skills and knowledge are required to adequately perform this job. The list of competencies is then compared to the training content to determine if the appropriate skills and knowledge are covered.

Although this form of needs assessment is expeditious, especially when time is of the essence, there are a number of traps that can prevent you from reaching the bottom-line business results the needs assessment was intended to achieve.

Trap 1 - Training Isn't Always the Answer
Frequently, needs assessments presuppose that training is the solution to a performance issue (in fact, it is often referred to as a "training needs assessment"). But this isn't always the case. For example, let's say your vice president of operations comes to you and says, "We need time management training. Our managers and supervisors just can't seem to get things done, so we need to teach them how to manage their time." Certainly you can implement the time management training program, but are you absolutely sure this training will solve the problem? Unfortunately, no. You may feel confident that the managers and supervisors will gain some knowledge about time management, but there's no way to be sure that they will be able to "get things done" once they've undergone time management training.

Solution
Before assuming that training is the answer to a performance problem, first make sure that the problem isn't the result of a cause other than a skill or knowledge deficiency. Other common causes of performance issues include:

• Unclear expectations or lack of expectations altogether;
• Improper consequences or incentives;
• Inadequate tools, materials or work space; and
• Lack of feedback.

Trap 2 - People Don't Know What They Don't Know
Relying on job performers to provide you with a detailed description of the skills and knowledge required to be proficient at their jobs creates a risky foundation on which to base a needs assessment. For one thing, it's hard for anyone to articulate what, for many of us, is an internalized and almost unconscious understanding of our job tasks and skills. For another, job performers frequently cannot identify the skills or knowledge they lack to perform their jobs adequately - in other words, they don't know what they don't know.

Solution
It is imperative that you interview the correct people in order to maximize the quality of the information you are attempting to retrieve. Table 8.1 gives some guidelines for you to keep in mind.

Trap 3 - Performance vs. Competencies
For many, this is the biggest trap of all. By focusing on generating a list of competencies, it's easy to lose focus on the reason you are conducting the needs assessment in the first place - to overcome a specific performance problem or to realize an opportunity for performance improvement. At the same time, competency-based lists tend to be imprecise and vague, using fuzzy terms such as "strong leadership skills," "good facilitator," or "a supportive coach or mentor." Because these descriptions are not behaviorally based, and because they often reflect generic qualities that could apply to a wide range of people, it's difficult to teach these skills in a manner that will result in a positive behavioral change.

Solution
Rather than focusing on competencies, focus your needs assessment on the performance issue - the difference between what people are (or are not) doing versus what they should be doing - so that you can identify what the performance level should be and can pinpoint relevant solutions. Here are some examples of interview questions that can help you keep your information-gathering efforts as focused as possible.

• What should the target audience be doing?
• What does the target audience need to know or be able to do to meet the organizational results?
• What does the target audience need to know or be able to do to meet management and/or customer needs and expectations?
• What does the target audience know now and what can they do now to help meet needs and expectations?
• What is getting in the way of performance in terms of motivation and incentives?
• What is getting in the way of performance in terms of environment (lack of tools, information, resources, time, and so forth)?

How to Conduct a Needs Assessment That Gets Results

There are several different ways to conduct a needs assessment. Many times, the situation will determine which way to proceed. The situational conditions that can determine your approach include:

• Time available;
• People who can or cannot be involved;
• Politics and other sensitivities; and
• Budget.

The following five high-level steps can help you in conducting a successful needs assessment:

1. Identify and clearly state the issue or opportunity for improvement, and the organizational outcomes or needs related to the performance. It's important that you understand from the beginning exactly what performance issue is being addressed, and that everyone (stakeholders, performers, etc.) has the same understanding of this issue. If the issue isn't clear, conduct a goal analysis. For example, if you've been told "the customer support staff needs to be more professional when dealing with customers," you need to dig deeper to define what being "more professional" means, since this can mean many different things to many different people and to many different organizations. Once you have clearly defined the issue, be sure your client agrees with this definition. Next, determine how solving this issue will make a difference (i.e., is the problem worth solving?). Assuming it is, then recommend ways of attacking the issue through a needs assessment. Discuss data-collection methods and the resources you might need to conduct the assessment. Also determine a timeframe for conducting the assessment.

By clarifying these matters upfront, you will have all of the information you need to stay focused on the true intent of the assessment. You will also be able to link solutions to what is important to your organization.

2. Decide how you will collect the performance data. There are a number of ways to collect performance data, including interviews, observations, surveys, and source documents. You should select the combination of data-collection methods that best fits your situation. Whenever possible, consider conducting face-to-face interviews when gathering information from people. Interviews are two-way, allowing you to ask follow-up questions or to restate your questions as needed to generate the information you are looking for. You can also find out more through face-to-face interviews by interpreting non-verbal cues. Although this method of data collection can be very time consuming and resource intensive, you will be sure to gather accurate data the first time around.

3. Analyze the data. Keeping in mind the clearly stated performance issue and how it affects the organization, document the data you have gathered by identifying consistencies and inconsistencies within the data. Be careful not to jump to conclusions at this point. Just document your findings and the facts within those findings. Once documented, identify performance gaps by comparing what the target audience is doing to what they need to be doing.

4. Conduct a cause analysis. Before deciding on possible solutions to close the performance gap, you need to first identify the causes for the gap. Is the gap due to a lack of skill or knowledge? Are there motivational or environmental barriers to desired performance? Have job expectations and necessary information been adequately communicated to the job performers? If you are unsure of the causes (that is, you do not have the data to support your cause analysis), ask more questions to determine the true causes of the performance gap. A great tool for analyzing data and figuring out the causes of performance gaps is Mager and Pipe's (1997) Performance Analysis Worksheet. This tool leads you through a series of questions that will help you identify the cause(s) of a performance gap. It will also help you identify possible solutions.

5. Identify possible performance improvement solutions. Based on the cause(s) of the performance gap, determine the best solution(s) to close the gap. Keep in mind how the performance issue links to organizational results and needs, to ensure that your proposed solution(s) are acceptable and relevant. Also keep in mind your audience's sensitivities and predispositions. For example, if the vice president of Human Resources has publicly announced that the solution will entail training, make sure that your recommendations include a training solution that is adequately supported by the data. Most likely, you will identify more than one solution, especially if there are multiple causes for the performance gap.

Helpful Tips

No Time for a Needs Assessment?
If time is of the essence, do the best you can, with the time and resources you have, to at least:

• Clearly define the issue and how it affects the organization;
• Identify what the target audience is doing compared to what they should be doing;
• Determine the causes of the performance gap; and
• Identify solutions that will close the gap.

Even an hour of fact finding with your client can uncover some of the performance gaps and the causes of these gaps.

Access the Right People
Be specific regarding the type of people you need to interview, and don't settle for less. There may be times when you are asked to talk with certain people for political reasons. While it may be smart to include these people in the assessment, make sure you understand why they were asked to participate.

Align All Vested Parties
Because a needs assessment can be very revealing, tactfully ensure that all vested parties agree that a needs assessment must be done and that your approach to conducting this assessment is acceptable. By taking into account their sensitivities and any organizational politics, you will be more likely to secure agreement from each party.

Explain Why You Are Gathering Data
When gathering information from people during the assessment, be sure to clearly explain the reason for the interview or data gathering, as well as the goals of the assessment. Be sensitive, factual and diplomatic in your explanation.

Sort Fact from Opinion
When analyzing the data you have collected, try to ensure that you collect mostly facts rather than opinion or perception. To help clarify which is which, consider tactful ways to gain clarification (for example, "Can you give me some examples of what makes you say that?").

Don't Jump to Conclusions
Be careful not to jump from the problem immediately to the solution. To ensure that your recommendations will work the first time around, you should first complete a cause analysis to uncover the real causes for performance gaps.

Don't Gather Too Much or Too Little Data
Be sure to prioritize your questions so that you obtain essential information first. Focus on the performance gap and the cause(s) of the gap.

Keep in mind that the information in this chapter is a high-level overview of how to conduct a needs assessment that is designed to generate results. Use this information as a foundation for your approach, and be sure to adjust information as necessary based on the situation you are facing.

Reprinted from What Smart Trainers Know: The Secrets of Success from the World's Foremost Experts, Chapter 8, edited by Lorraine L. Ukens, Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 2001. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978)750-8400, fax (978)750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212)850-6011, fax (212)850-6008, E-Mail: PERMREQ@WILEY.COM.

I Think I Can
The Importance of Self-Efficacy in Instruction
By Robert F. Mager

Some years ago I conducted a learning experiment in a boys' school in Italy. During lunch one day, one of the instructors told me a story about one of his boys. It seems that this boy, who was good at math, took a math test one day, and in answer to the question, "How much is ten divided by one?" wrote eight. When asked how he arrived at the answer, the boy replied, "Well, I knew the answer was ten, but our teachers always tell us that when you divide, the answer has to be smaller than the number you started with. So I figured if ten wasn't right, the answer must be nine."

"But you wrote down eight," said the puzzled teacher. "Why was that?"

"Well," replied the boy, sheepishly, "everybody always tells me how stupid I am. So I figured if I put down the right answer, they would think I was cheating."

In this case, the boy had a favorable attitude toward the subject described. What was missing was that he didn't believe he had the skill he actually did. He didn't feel confident enough in his skill to write what he knew to be the right answer.

That's how the concept of self-efficacy differs from the concept of attitude. While it is possible to have a favorable attitude toward a subject or activity, it is at the same time possible to believe that the subject-related skills are weaker or less developed than they actually are. And that causes people to hang back from something they would really like to do. It causes them not to persevere in the face of adverse circumstances.

What Is Self-Efficacy?
Self-efficacy refers to the judgments that people make about their abilities to execute particular courses of action - about their ability to do specific things. For example, "I know I can give a talk in front of large audiences." Self-efficacy isn't about the actual skills that people have; it's about the judgments people make about what they can do with those skills. People with low self-efficacy don't believe that they can do the things they actually can do. On the other hand, people with high self-efficacy usually make more realistic judgments about what they can do. When their skills in an area are strong, they judge them to be strong and are willing to act on that judgment.

Why Is Self-Efficacy Important?
The importance of strong self-efficacy cannot be overestimated. Dr. Albert Bandura said it best in "Organizational Applications of Social Cognitive Theory," an article published in the December 1988 issue of the Australian Journal of Management:

"People who have a strong belief in their capabilities think, feel, and behave differently from those who have doubts about their capabilities. People who doubt their capabilities shy away from difficult tasks. They have low aspirations and weak commitment to the goals they choose to pursue. Failure wrecks their motivation … They give up quickly in the face of difficulties and are slow to recover their confidence following failure or setbacks."

Note that it is possible to have high self-efficacy about a specific performance and, at the same time, expect that it will produce negative results. For example, "I know I can make a terrific sales presentation, but I also know I won't get the contract." Self-efficacy refers to judgments about performing a specific act, rather than to expectations about the consequences or outcomes of that act.

Why is Self-Efficacy Important to Instructors?
Because people with low self-efficacy are made, not born. Because the actions of instructors can make the difference between a willingness to try to apply what was learned and a tendency to quit. Because instructors can make their students less (or more) vulnerable to on-the-job conditions that aren't always supportive and can help them survive rejection and periodic failures.

How is Self-Efficacy Strengthened?
There are five types of things you can do to strengthen self-efficacy:

1. Ensure performance mastery. The most powerful way to strengthen self-efficacy regarding an ability to do something is to make sure students learn to do that thing well. But mastery is not enough, because mastery is just raw data. Unless students are also taught that the mastery is a result of their own efforts, they may leave you thinking things such as "The instructor helped me," or "I only did it right because of the job aid," or "I was just lucky." For performance to have a maximum effect, students must learn that they are the cause of the performance. Here's how:

• Arrange for enough independent practice so that mastery, as defined by course objectives, is achieved or surpassed.
• Break the learning into manageable chunks that have definite end points. That will increase the number of successes that the students can experience.
• Cast your feedback comments in terms of progress achieved, rather than in terms of learning yet to be accomplished.

  Right: "Your work shows fewer spelling errors today than it did yesterday."
  Wrong: "You've got a long way to go before your spelling will be good enough."

2. Model desired behavior. Here are some principles of modeling that can help you make modeling work for you rather than against you.

• Observers learn by watching and imitating others, so make sure that you model the behaviors that you want your students to emulate.
• Observers will be more likely to imitate a model who is similar to them. Make sure your students understand that the modeled behavior is due to the skill of the model, rather than to other factors.
• Observers will be more likely to imitate modeled performance when they observe the model being reinforced for that performance. In a similar vein, observers who see a model being punished will tend not to imitate the performance that was punished.

3. Use task-diagnostic feedback. We can interpret feedback in either self-diagnostic or task-diagnostic ways, and the way we do it will have an enormous (often life-long) effect on self-efficacy. Self-diagnostic feedback interprets less-than-perfect performance as a personal deficiency. "You just aren't motivated enough;" "Maybe you just don't have the talent for this work." Self-diagnostic feedback blames imperfect performance on failings of the individual.

   Task-diagnostic feedback focuses on the task being performed. Failure is used as information through which the performance may be improved, rather than as evidence of incompetence. "If you'll put your hand in this position rather than that one, I think you'll see some improvement;" "This error happened because at this point you added, instead of subtracting." Task-diagnostic feedback focuses on ways in which performance of a task may be improved. Here are some ways to strengthen self-efficacy through task-diagnostic feedback:

• Focus feedback comments on characteristics of the performance itself and on ways to improve the performance, rather than on student characteristics.
• Avoid deliberately making students fail in public. For students with low self-efficacy, public failure will be more destructive - not only to the performer, but to observers who also happen to be low on self-efficacy. For example, don't allow students to perform in front of an entire class until their skill and self-efficacy levels are high.
• Arrange for students to experience successes (e.g., mark the right answers rather than the wrong ones on a test or skill check). Relate student performance to progress toward achievement of the objective.
• Help students interpret their "failures" as being not-yet-competent performance. (As they begin learning a new skill, they are expected to make mistakes. If someone labels each and every imperfect practice attempt as another failure, their self-efficacy will suffer.)
• Provide students with clear-cut, near-term goals.
• Once a skill has been mastered, provide practice under a range of conditions, so that students can judge themselves competent to handle the actual situations they are likely to encounter.

4. Strengthen favorable attitude. Students who are favorably disposed toward the subject they are learning are more likely to develop subject-related skills. Because skill promotes high self-efficacy, instructors should focus on the development of a favorable attitude toward the target subject. Arrange for students to perform successfully, and then be sure to help them interpret their achievements as evidence of increasing capability. For example, "You can see that as a result of your own efforts, you can do that faster (or better) than you'll ever be expected to do it on the job."
   
   
5. Interpret physiological information. People tend to make inferences about their ability from physiological cues such as aches, pain, effort, etc. If something is difficult to do, they may very well conclude that they don't have the ability to do it. Your job is to help them understand that the difficulty of accomplishing something is not necessarily related to their ability to accomplish it. After all, lots of things require effort - learning to play a musical instrument, becoming any kind of a skilled professional, and so on. If students are allowed to conclude that the difficulty of the task defines their ability to learn it, they will lose many opportunities to master what might become highly enjoyable and/or useful skills. What to do?

• Make sure that students do not interpret physiological cues that signify effort (i.e., cues that say, "Hey, there's some hard work going on here!") as a lack of ability.
• Model (demonstrate) finding pleasure in the hard work; e.g., aerobics class instructors who say, "Wow, this is tough," while laughing, smiling, and doing more.
• If experiencing pain, discomfort, or difficulty at a certain point in the learning is normal or a sign of progress (e.g., "no pain, no gain"), say so to the students.

It is critical that the judgments that students make about their ability to perform specific tasks come close to matching the true level of their skills. With high self-efficacy, students will be more likely to try and to persevere in the face of obstacles and occasional failures. It's worth doing all you can to help your students achieve the exhilarating state of high self-efficacy.

Self-Efficacy Checklist
When you want to find out if your self-efficacy strengthening practices are on track, you may want to use the Self-Efficacy Checklist as a guide. It includes items specifically relating to improvement of self-efficacy and will help you spot opportunities for improvement.

Excerpted from Robert F. Mager's How to Turn Learners On… without turning them off, 3rd Edition (List Price $22.95, 152 pgs., 1-879618-18-4, CEP Press, 1997) and Making Instruction Work, 2nd Edition (List Price $22.95, 286 pgs., 1-879618-02-8, CEP Press, 1997). For more information on Bob Mager, click here.

Turning Research Into Results

A major challenge for those who develop the human assets in organizations is choosing from the bewildering array of performance improvement products. Team-building, Myers-Briggs type profiling, empowerment, web-based training, multimedia, corporate culture transformation, job and work re-engineering, and management by storytelling are only a few of the huge variety of products and services offered to help us manage our opportunities and problems. New training and performance improvement companies appear every day, offering just-in-time technologies that promise to manage our knowledge and skills, motivate our people, and improve team communication and efficiency. Our in-boxes overflow with slick brochures; our email spits out a daily ration of e-ads, and our faxes grind out amazing performance improvement offers by the pound.

Do any of these things do what they promise? How do you pick and choose? Their proponents claim they are working in successful organizations, that they provide the most recent technology, and that they are based on the work of world-renowned experts. If that is true, why do many of us notice little or no improvement from some of these products? Finding programs that live up to their claims can be more difficult than it sounds.

In this increasingly complicated world of training and performance improvement, what can you rely on to guide your decision-making process? Research, say Dick Clark and Fred Estes, authors of Turning Research into Results: A Guide to Selecting the Right Performance Solutions. Just as a doctor needs the latest medical equipment and research to deliver the best care to a patient, training and performance improvement professionals need to equip themselves with the latest developments in the field in order to better serve their clients. Research is uncovering powerful truths about what works and what doesn't - guidelines that affect how you do your job, what products you choose, and the programs you support. For example, over the years, research has proven that:

• Poorly designed or delivered training can actually cut productivity.
  It's simply not true that poor training has no consequences. Just as a doctor or CEO produces consequences when he or she does a poor job, bad training can cause more problems than existed initially. One problem is that it can cause the scrambling of previously well-organized memory for a work-related topic. As a result, people are slower or unable to remember the information after training then they were before, and the investment in training has made the situation worse. In other cases, management team-building exercises have been found to increase destructive competition between management groups in the same organization. These negative results refute the belief that any training will produce at least some positive results.
  
  
• Reaction questionnaires or "smile sheets" often indicate the opposite of what actually happened in a performance improvement program.
  People often give very positive ratings to ineffective performance programs. Reaction forms ask people what they liked the most. What they like, however, is not always what helps them perform better. They may have liked the training because of the ease with which it was applied or the personality of the trainer. In these cases, people are affected by the less important aspects of a program and may rate it highly even if it made them less productive. Products that feel comfortable may not be challenging our current paradigms enough. For example, research has shown that training programs may receive high smile sheet ratings for client satisfaction, yet participants who are tested to see if they learned the course content show no learning gains. People report that they gained the most from a new approach when they may actually have gained little or lost ground.

  The reverse can also happen. A successful program can be judged to be ineffective because it asks participants to change something very basic about their beliefs, expectations, and behavior. This counterintuitive result occurs, in part, because some interventions that make us more productive also challenge comfortable routine and our mental models of the world. This change process can make some of us uncomfortable. Some people don't like change in any form. Yet solving significant problems often requires change, and when we are feeling too comfortable we may choose the wrong medicine or too small a dosage. The result is like taking snake oil for a serious medical condition - the alcohol content may make you feel good for a while, but it does nothing to solve the real problem.

• When experts design and present training in their area of expertise, they often give wrong information or fail to give complete information.
  The knowledge and skills of experts, including the way that they make decisions and solve problems, are highly automated and unconscious. They can't teach what they are not aware of doing even if they are committed to passing on what they do so well. Worse yet, experts are not aware that most of their knowledge and almost all of their skills are unconscious. Yet research shows that almost all of them believe that they are giving accurate and complete information to trainees. Since most training in organizations is based on content derived from interviewing experts, this is a major problem.
  
  
• When the performance of work teams is evaluated as a group, rather than evaluating individual members, individual productivity declines significantly.
  This researched phenomenon, called social loafing, occurs when group members reduce their individual effort, believing that their contribution won't be missed. It also appears that when managers add more members to groups to increase their output, individual performance falls even farther if group members do not believe that their individual contributions are being assessed.
  
  
• Employment empowerment strategies can have both positive AND negative effects.
  Many people are more motivated when empowerment strategies allow them to participate in deciding how they do a job. These strategies are called by various names - Quality Circles, Leaderless Teams, and Self-Directed Work Groups are a few examples. However, in some organizational cultures, giving people control of how they do their jobs has been shown to backfire and cause lower motivation and increased employee turnover. In some organizational cultures, people are more motivated by a strong managerial presence, and empowerment is seen as disruptive and interfering with an effective manager.
  
  
• Some competency-based approaches do not work.
  Many performance improvement vendors now emphasize "competency-based" systems. Advocates of competency-based systems analyze your operation and suggest performance competencies necessary to ensure success. A possible outcome would be to require that people be able to: "Manage profit and loss, control expenses, and set and manage financial goals." Who could disagree? If high level and abstract competencies help you get support for the specific work goals that drive performance, they are positive. But if general goals replace concrete, specific, and timely goals, they can be both distracting and destructive. The competencies you need from people will change as business goals change. General competencies are only the beginning and cannot serve as adequate work goals for teams or individuals.

Developments in research have a very real impact on how training and performance improvement products should be designed and implemented. Taking advantage of those developments means increased certainty that the decisions you make about performance improvement will be the right ones.

Excerpted from Turning Research into Results: A Guide to Selecting the Right
Performance Solutions, by Richard E. Clark and Fred Estes (List Price $26.95, 198 pgs., 1-879618-28-1, CEP Press, 2002).

Richard E. Clark, Ed.D., is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Southern California (USC). He previously served as Division Head for USC's Educational Psychology and Technology Department and as Director of USC's Professional Studies and Community Programs. He is the 2002 recipient of the prestigious Thomas F. Gilbert Distinguished Professional Achievement Award from the International Society for Performance Improvement.

Fred Estes has worked for several years managing training and performance improvement projects for large companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Bank of America. He has worked as an internal performance consultant, an instructional designer, and an educational program manager. He has contributed to several professional journals and books.

The Path to Smart Training Decisions

How do you determine if a training program will deliver on its promises or miss the mark - before you invest valuable resources? One solution is The Path to Smart Training Decisions flowchart and worksheet, which provides a practical, step-by-step process for evaluating prospective training programs using the Criterion-Referenced Instruction methodology.

Here's a quick summary of the major steps of this process:

1. Is there a business need?
There should be a substantial need for new training, such as preparing new employees, enhancing the performance of current employees with skills they don't yet possess, or implementing business strategies (such as new processes or systems, culture change, restructuring, downsizing) which will require employees to acquire new skills.

2. Is the focus on performance?
The program should focus on things you want learners to be able to do that they can't do now. The performances should be described with action verbs and outcomes. Good examples would be to prepare a budget, to ride a bicycle, or to repair a washing machine.

3. Are tasks and skills detailed?
The specific job tasks and skills should be named and described in detail to ensure that the program focuses on all the right performances.

4. Is practice realistic?
It is crucial that learners practice the skills they need to learn in realistic job contexts - that is, in the same manner that they will be expected to perform on the job.

5. Does practice include a mix of job situations?
The program should include practice in a representative mix of job situations. Without representative practice - including appropriate triggering cues - there will be a sharp learning curve on the job.

6. Do learners practice to job competence?
Each learner's job competence in each skill should be verified during the program. Requiring each learner to demonstrate competence ensures self-efficacy upon return to work, in addition to proving the effectiveness of the program to management.

7. Does practice equal at least half of training?
The program needs to provide learners with skill mastery. To ensure mastery, each learner should spend at least half of his or her time practicing needed skills.

8. Will practice cause negative feelings?
Instructional practices should not produce anxiety, embarrassment, or frustration. Attaching negative emotions to the training experience interferes with learning.

9. Is the program of value?
The benefits of the program must outweigh the costs. What are the optimal program benefits, and how effective do you expect the program to be?

The Path to Smart Training Decisions flowchart and worksheet comes FREE with the purchase of How to Make Smart Decisions About Training: Save Money, Time & Frustration by Paul G. Whitmore, Ph.D. ($22.95, 1-879618-20-6, 155 pgs., CEP Press, 2002). In a recent review of How to Make Smart Decisions About Training, Training Magazine said the flowchart and worksheet are "worth the price of the book and will prove invaluable tools in sitting down with a manager and determining whether, and what, training is indicated - or in feeling more confident that a vendor can deliver on promises made."

To order the book or to view a FREE chapter excerpt, click here. To order The Path to Smart Training Decisions Flowchart and Worksheet (pkg. of 25, $72), click here.

How Training Can Minimize the Risk of Expensive Technology Failures

Would you air condition your entire house while leaving your windows and doors wide open? Not likely. Yet according to the May 20, 2002 issue of USA Today, companies worldwide throw away up to 20% of the $2.7 trillion (or $540 billion) spent on software and other technology each year. Experts cite a number of reasons for these high-tech failures, including the fact that: a) Many companies do not implement the new technology properly, and b) They underestimate the time needed to make the technology work.

On a closely related - yet widely overlooked - note, companies often underestimate the role of training when making high-tech buying decisions. Time and again, we have seen companies throw training together after the technology purchase is ready to be implemented or once it has already been implemented. When this happens, trainers usually have very little time and/or money to design and develop training to provide users with the skills and knowledge they need to use the new technology effectively or to address changes to job processes and practices resulting from the new technology.

The result is technology that people don't know how to use and often avoid using. When avoidance isn't an option, the only recourse is to learn through trial and error, an extremely risky, expensive and time-consuming process. It should therefore come as no surprise that up to 83% of new technology systems fail to meet the expectations of stakeholders (Mourier & Smith, 2001).1

One reason many organizations overlook the need for training is the mistaken belief that investing millions of dollars in new technology will, in and of itself, generate improved returns. Executives often fail to understand that the investment they are making is not just in technology but in what their employees must be able to do with this technology.

So how can you help ensure the success of your organization's next high-tech purchase? Here are some helpful tips.

1. Establish a partnership with your tech managers. Look for opportunities to improve the relationship between your two departments. For example, what information is currently being shared interdepartmentally? How can communication be improved? In an ideal world, your tech managers should notify you as soon as they decide on a new technology purchase or a change to an existing technology. This will help ensure that you have the time to design and develop training that will provide learners with the skills, knowledge and self-confidence to use the technology effectively.
   
   
2. Make sure the training is derived from the jobs people will be performing on the new technology. According to the USA Today article, companies often buy more technology than they need. This doesn't mean you need to make the same mistake when it comes to training. Ignore the temptation to train people on all of the different functions, bells and whistles of the new technology. Instead, focus your efforts on determining exactly how the technology will change the way that people do their jobs. Then ensure that your training teaches people how to perform their specific jobs using the new technology.
   
   
3. Incorporate practice and feedback. One of the most challenging aspects of training is getting people to immediately apply their newly learned skills back on the job. This is especially critical with technology training, where the consequences of not using new systems or equipment correctly could quickly result in millions of dollars in lost revenue, clients and/or productivity. To help ensure that people can effectively transfer what they have learned back on the job, incorporate realistic practice situations that mirror actual job conditions as closely as possible. Also, provide learners with constructive and timely feedback so that they know in what areas they need to improve and how to improve. The more opportunity users have to practice in a "safe" environment, the more comfortable and self-confident they will be when the new technology goes live.
   
   
4. Require learners to demonstrate competence in each job task being taught. Research has actually shown that training can make people perform worse than they did before being trained.2 By requiring learners to demonstrate mastery of each task being taught, you'll have the confidence of knowing that they can perform each task correctly and at the level of competence needed to use the new technology effectively. If, for some reason, users fail to apply what they have learned back on the job, you'll also have the confidence of knowing that the problem isn't instructional in nature. Rather, a motivational or environmental obstacle is likely getting in the way of desired performance.
   
   
5. Provide users with on-the-job support tools. To help users apply what you've taught them back on the job, create step-by-step job aids, checklists or other support tools. Better yet, incorporate these support tools in your training program. This way, learners will already be familiar with them and will know how to access needed information.

For advice or counsel on how you can ensure the success of your organization's next technology investment, contact Allison Ehrler-Meyer at 770-458-4080 or aehrlermeyer@cepworldwide.com. You may also find the information in the following articles helpful:

"How to Guarantee the Effectiveness of Your System Conversion Training"

- System Conversion "Do's"
- System Conversion "Don'ts"

¹Mourier, P. & Smith, M. Conquering Organizational Change: How to Succeed Where Most Companies Fail. Atlanta: CEP Press, 2001.

²Clark, R.E. & Estes, F. Turning Research Into Results: A Guide to Selecting the Right Performance Solutions. Atlanta: CEP Press, 2002.

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