What is a “Needs Assessment”?
Almost every HR initiative begins with a Needs Assessment. One HR training specialist announced to a group of manufacturing Operations Managers, “Our most important deliverable to you is the Needs Assessment.” The Operations Managers hooted. “We don’t need your needs assessment! We just need you to train our operators to use the equipment without breaking anything.” Sandra, the HR lady, burst into tears.
In the jargon, a “need” is a discrepancy between “what is” and “what should be.” That’s a big playing field on which a consultant can build an assessment investigation. And there are plenty of methods for doing that (just Google “needs assessment”). That’s a good thing, because HR – and consultants, both internal and external – need some way to determine what and where the organization’s problems are.
One tool we use – the Workplace Communication Assessment – is a survey that asks people about the issues they see daily in their organization. It’s quick – 56 questions – and lets each employee say what causes the biggest headaches in doing their jobs. The tool then tallies the answers by categories and prescribes a few ideas to include in a training program, based on the kinds of communication that will reduce or eliminate the problem.
Example: A recent client’s survey scores revealed that 3 types of workplace issues (out of 8 possible categories) were the most frequent barriers to their job effectiveness:
- Poor planning and workload overwhelm – Too much work to do in too little time;
- Lack of teamwork – People not working together or helping each other; and
- Lack of accountability – People not “owning” their jobs or honoring their agreements.
We used the diagnostics that came back with the survey results to add four elements to our training programs for this client, putting each of “The Four Conversations” to work:
- Drafting a brief statement of each Department’s current goals and objectives that would go on the top of each Departmental staff meeting agenda.
- Getting the staff into Department discussion groups to make a list of ideas for improvements in (a) having clearer job results and schedules, and (b) interactions with one another and with other groups.
- Making specific agreements to adopt several of these ideas right away, and to review the progress at each Department meeting.
- Reviewing and updating the goals, ideas for improvements, and agreements at each Department meeting.
All of their “top 3” workplace issues began improving in just 1 month after implementing the ideas they developed in the training. The biggest surprise? They had not been having regular or standardized Department meetings at all – only meetings to solve problems or announce changes. They used the results of the Workplace Communication Assessment to invent their own staff meetings. One group leader for Development emailed me saying, “Now Staff Meetings are a thing! We have an agenda, we really talk, and we don’t get bogged down in side conversations that waste some people’s time.”
They put their “Needs Assessment” to work. Sandra would be pleased.
