Needs Analysis

Need to create learning that actually works? This needs analysis guide helps you avoid creating training that nobody wants and start building solutions that drive real business results. It shows you how to connect learning directly to performance—so you can prove your value while making a genuine impact.

The following methodology is a synthesis of Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping and the Kirkpatrick Levels of Evaluation.

BASIC QUESTIONS OF A NEEDS ANALYSIS

What changes in performance, behaviors, and attitudes are needed or expected? How will we get there? What are the expected costs or benefits of any proposed solution?

A thorough needs analysis will give you insight into:

  • Impact. How will enablement impact the business and your audience?

  • Outcomes. What does the data say about that current situation, and how can you use that to measure outcomes?

  • Existing programs & materials. What is already available address the performance issue, and what are the gaps in that material?

  • Audience. Are you targeting the right people with enablement?

  • Demand. Do people want enablement? What kind of enablement do they want?

  • Modality. What enablement approaches will be the most effective?

  • Non-training needs. What are the environmental factors? What systems/processes need to change?

We conduct needs analyses so our learners can verify their own skills and knowledge, express their interests and opinions, and tell us their learning habits and preferences. We use that information to describe the gap between what exists and what is needed.

We can think of a needs analysis happening in 4 stages, and the output of each stage corresponds to one of the four levels of evaluation.

Stages of a Needs Analysis

The stages are:

  1. Business needs

  2. Behavioral needs

  3. Learning needs

  4. Learner needs

Business needs will tell us how to measure the business impact. Behavioral needs will guide us to measurable behaviors. Learning needs tell us how to assess learners before, during, and after a learning experience. And a clear picture of learner needs should result in a positive reaction from learners in course surveys, for example.

We talk about these stages as if they happen linearly.

In reality, however, the stages and measures are cyclical and iterative as you revise earlier findings with more research.

Needs analysis is both a formal event and a continuous practice of listening to learners and stakeholders alike. This page is about formal needs analyses.

  • This stage is typically when a leader comes to you and says, “We need training about X.” This is when you set yourself up as a partner to solve a business problem, not necessarily to produce a course.

    Ask questions like:

    • What specific business problem or performance gap are you trying to address?

    • What data tells you that you have a problem?

    • How will success be measured for this initiative?

    • How does this training align with broader organizational goals?

    • How urgent is this training need?

    The goal of this stage, is to be able to fill in the underlined portions of this statement:

    A measure we already use will increase/decrease X% by date as people in a specific group DO something.

    For example, we might say CRM pipeline generation will increase 50% by the end of Q2 as Commercial and Enterprise AEs use the whitespace dashboard.

    You may find that you are unable to fill in this statement completely until you have gotten into the other stages of the needs analysis, or that the statement changes drastically throughout the process. That may be perfectly fine because it can mean that a fuzzy problem is becoming clearer because of your needs analysis.

    Other questions you will want your stakeholders to answer are:

    • What is the available budget for this project?

    • Who are the subject matter experts we can consult?

    • Who needs to approve the training materials?

  • At this stage, you are talking to stakeholders and subject matter experts. They really like to talk about what people need to know, but we want to know what they need to do. Like if we were watching them in a silent movie, what would we observe? This is a prime opportunity to do some action mapping (helpful flowchart here).

    Questions you need SMEs to answer are:

    • What are the desired outcomes or behavior changes from this training?

    • What previous training efforts have been attempted, and what were the results?

    • What potential barriers to implementation might we face?

    • What support will be available to learners after training?

    • What existing content or resources can we leverage?

    • What specific actions do people need to take to achieve the business goal?

    • What are the best performers doing differently from everyone else?

    • Why aren't people performing the necessary actions already?

    • What environmental factors are supporting or hindering the desired behavior?

    • How will performing these actions help the individual performer?

    Another helpful question to ask at this stage is, “How long does it take to become proficient in this activity?” This helps stakeholders and SMEs manage expectations for what can be accomplished in a given amount of time.

  • At this stage, you want to talk to a good sampling of people in your target audience. Learn what they already know and think, so you can figure out what the gap is and the enablement intervention needed.

    Ask questions like:

    • What do learners already know about this topic?

    • What misconceptions or knowledge gaps are most common?

    • What specific skills or knowledge do learners need to acquire?

    • What is the current proficiency level of the target audience?

    • What prior training or experience is relevant to this topic?

    • How do learners currently approach these tasks or problems?

    • What do learners believe they need to learn?

    • What motivations or attitudes might affect learning in this area?

  • Interview your target audience to understand how to make your intervention accessible, acceptable, and useful to your learners.

    Ask:

    • What are the time constraints or scheduling preferences of our learners?

    • Where and how do learners prefer to access learning content?

    • What modalities do they enjoy?

    • What technology do learners have access to and feel comfortable using?

    • What language or accessibility requirements should we consider?

    • How do cultural factors influence how our audience learns best?

    • What previous learning experiences have been successful with this audience?

    • What potential resistance might learners have to this training?

    • How can we make this learning experience relevant to learners' daily work?

Plan Your Needs Analysis

For each stage of analysis, your plan should include:

  • Objectives

  • Audience

  • Sample selection

  • Data collection

  • Data analysis

  • Action

Example Needs Analysis Plan

Objective Figure out what sellers need to confidently and accurately sell TCRM as part of a complete analytics solution, and how they would like to learn.
Audience Commercial and Enterprise sellers who are new to having TCRM quota
Sample selectionFor focus groups: Accounting for Inclusive Advisory Group Selection, we need 4 commercial-global AEs, 4 commercial-industry AEs, and 4 enterprise AEs from each theather (36 total). At each cross section of theatre and category, we need at least one seller who exceeded quota, and one seller who did not meet quota. We also want 3 TCRM SEs from each theatre. We will reach out to the theatre enablement leads and audience owners for names.
For surveys: Send to all commercial and enterprise AEs.
Data collection Enterprise data showing sales teams' progress on TCRM quota, surveys, and focus group discussions
Data analysis Compare TCRM quota data before and after enablement intervention. Visualize survey data. Collate recurring themes from focus groups.
Action Draft an enablement plan to address the gap using at least 3 modalities.

  • What do you want to learn from each stage of this analysis?

    The needs analysis should be a systematic and comprehensive approach that reveals both the problems and the perceived solutions, which allows the designer to create an enablement program that connects the current situation to the desired future.

  • Whose needs are you measuring, and to whom will you be giving this information?

    The description of the target audience may include various categories of employees, theatre, vertical, industry, of level of achievement. The description should be detailed enough to result in a reliable sampling, which means the data derived from the assessment will be more useful.

    An important aspect of the target audience description is to describe the relationship between the audience and the issue or topic of the analysis. You should know what your audience already knows or believes about the topic and what efforts have already been made to address gaps. Review all previous needs assessments available and investigate all prior training delivered through other people/projects. Always back up your findings with data.

  • How are you going to select a representative sample of your audience?

    Your sample size should be as large as is practical, and will generally be determined by the data collection method. Surveys and institutional data could theoretically sample the entire population of your target audience, but for interviews and focus groups, the sample size is constrained by time.

    Always consult Inclusive Advisory Group Selection Guidelines when designing your sample.

  • What data will tell you what you need to know, and how will you collect it?

    Potential data collection methods:

    • Survey

    • Interview

    • Focus group

    • Institutional data

    • Observation

    • Industry Trends/ Competitive Analysis

    Triangulation: when conducting a needs analysis, we triangulate conclusions using multiple forms of overlapping, diverse pieces of evidence and perspectives.

  • How will you analyze the data you collect?

    Open-ended questions can be easy to ask and difficult to analyze. It’s easier when respondents choose specific answers (yes/no, multiple choice, or Likert scales). But open-ended questions are important for a needs analysis, especially when you don’t yet have enough information to design a good survey. In that case, responses can be sorted into categories and subcategories and then tabulated (see Open, Axial, and Selective Coding).

    For quantitative data, your analysis can start with basic descriptive statistics , and where you want to compare before and after results, you may want to enlist a data analyst to help you with a matched pairs t-test .

  • What will you do with the information you gather? A needs analysis should result in making a decision.