How to Conduct a Training Needs Analysis: Methods and Practical Examples

When a team’s results fall short of expectations, the first reaction is often simple: the employees need training. But the cause of the problem isn’t always a lack of knowledge or skills. Results are also affected by work processes, tools, how tasks are defined, resources, and working conditions.

That’s why, before developing a training program, it’s important to understand what exactly keeps employees from achieving the required results and whether training will resolve that cause. To do this, companies conduct a training needs analysis.

In this article, we’ll look at how to identify employees’ needs, which methods and data sources to use, how to prioritize those needs, and how to turn the training needs analysis results into a concrete training plan.

What is a training needs analysis?

Training needs analysis is a systematic process of collecting and interpreting data that helps identify the gap between the required and current levels of performance and determine employees’ development needs. In international practice, this approach is called TNA (Training Needs Analysis), and the closely related term Training Needs Assessment is also used.

The purpose of TNA is not simply to find out what employees want to learn, but to determine which knowledge, skills, or practices are needed to perform specific job tasks at the required level.

For example, a sales team is not hitting its targets. The fact that the plan wasn’t met doesn’t in itself show that the managers need training. The analysis should establish where exactly the gap arises: in product knowledge, objection-handling skills, the lead-handling process, the CRM, goal setting, or another factor.

What does a training needs assessment help identify?

TNA allows you to answer several questions in sequence:

• What result needs to be achieved?
• What result are employees or the team delivering now?
• What is the gap between the current and the required level?
• What causes this gap?
• Can the cause be addressed through training?

As a result, the company gets a well-founded understanding of training needs, rather than a list of courses based solely on employees’ wishes or individual problems. This approach matters for HR and L&D because it helps link employee development to company goals, performance indicators, and specific job tasks.

When is training the right intervention for a performance problem?

The importance of training needs analysis becomes clear when a company sees a gap between expected and actual results and wants to understand its cause. It is at this stage that you can determine whether the problem stems from insufficient employee knowledge or skills, or whether it requires a different solution.

For example, a support team may take longer to handle customer requests than the standard allows. This doesn’t yet indicate a need for training. First, you need to check whether employees have enough product information, whether the request-handling system is set up correctly, and whether the workload matches the number of staff.

This is why training needs assessment is necessary: it keeps you from spending resources on training that won’t remove the root cause of the problem.

How to identify training needs among employees?

You identify training needs by comparing expected job results, actual performance indicators, and the competencies required to perform the tasks.

To do this, you assess:

• what results an employee should deliver in their role
• what knowledge, skills, and competencies are required to perform at the necessary level
• which of them are already in place
• where there is a gap that affects results

Say a company expects a sales manager to achieve a 20% conversion rate, but the actual figure is 12%. If the analysis shows that the manager doesn’t handle customer objections well enough, that is a specific skill development need. If, however, conversion drops because of low-quality leads, training the manager won’t solve the problem.

Put simply, a training need arises when insufficient results are linked to a specific gap in knowledge, skills, or competencies.

Which problems can’t be solved by training alone?

Training won’t fix a problem if its cause isn’t related to employees’ competencies.

Such causes may include:

• insufficient headcount or excessive workload
• inefficient or unclear work processes
• lack of necessary tools or resources
• unclear goals and performance criteria
• problems with work organization
• technical limitations of the systems employees use

For example, if managers lose leads because of a slow CRM system, additional sales training won’t eliminate the cause. The technical problem has to be solved first.

Therefore, the outcome of a training needs analysis may be not only a recommendation to run training, but also a decision to change a process, tool, or working conditions.

How to tell whether the problem stems from gaps in knowledge and skills?

The key question is whether an employee will be able to perform the task consistently once they have gained the necessary knowledge or practiced the required skill.

If the answer is yes, training may be the right solution. For example, managers know the product but can’t handle customer objections. In that case, you can define a specific skill development need and choose a suitable training program.

If employees already have the necessary knowledge and skills but can’t apply them because of a flawed process or a lack of resources, the cause lies elsewhere.

What are the three levels of training needs analysis?

Training needs analysis is conducted at three levels: organizational, job role, and individual employee. This split helps you avoid limiting yourself to assessing one person’s skills and take into account the company’s goals and the requirements of the job.

What is the organizational level of training needs analysis?

In an organizational training needs assessment, you determine which competencies the company needs to achieve its business goals and where systemic gaps exist.

You analyze:

• the company’s strategic goals and priorities
• changes in products, technologies, or business processes
• the performance indicators of departments
• competencies the workforce lacks
• the company’s future needs for new knowledge and skills

For example, if a company is switching to a new CRM system, the need for training arises not only among individual managers who don’t know how to use the new tool. You need to determine which roles will use the CRM, which skills they lack, and what training is required to move to the new way of working.

How to determine training needs at the job role and task level?

At this level, you analyze a specific role and the tasks an employee is expected to perform.

For each position, you define:

• key job tasks
• the standard or expected level of performance
• typical mistakes and the reasons they occur
• competencies that need to be developed

For example, for a sales manager, you can separately assess negotiation skills, product presentation, objection handling, and data entry in the CRM.

This level lets you move from a general company need to a specific list of competencies required for a particular job.

How to assess the training needs of individual employees?

In an employee training needs assessment, you compare an employee’s actual competencies with the requirements of the position and the expected level of performance.

Data sources may include:

• performance review results
• KPIs and other work indicators
• the manager’s observations
• results of knowledge and skills testing
• analysis of completed tasks
• the employee’s self-assessment

For example, a position requires delivering a product presentation to a defined standard. The assessment shows that the employee knows the product well but presents it to the client in an unstructured way. In this case, the need is to develop a specific presentation skill.

Thus, the three levels complement each other:

The result of this analysis is a link between the business goal, the job requirements, and an employee’s specific development need.

How to conduct a training needs analysis step by step

Here is how to conduct a training needs assessment: define the required result, record the current state, identify gaps, establish their causes, and decide on next actions, in that order. Following these training needs analysis steps helps you move from a general problem to a specific development need.

What do you need to define before starting the training needs analysis process?

First, record the purpose of the analysis and the result the company wants to improve. This could be a specific business metric, a team’s result, or the quality of a particular job task.

For example:

• increase sales conversion
• reduce customer request handling time
• reduce the number of errors in documents
• prepare employees to work with a new system
• build the competencies required for a new role

At this stage, it’s important to set a clear result criterion that you can later use to check whether the training program had the desired effect.

How to determine the required level of performance?

You need to describe what good performance looks like and which indicators will be used to assess it.

To do this, define:

• key job tasks
• standards for performing them
• required knowledge and skills
• target indicators
• acceptable level of errors or deviations

For example, for a support manager, the standard might be responding to 90% of requests within a set time, along with a certain level of customer satisfaction.

Without such a benchmark, it’s impossible to determine exactly which gap is affecting the results.

How to identify gaps between current and required
results?

Once the standard is defined, compare it with the actual
performance of employees or the team.

For example:

Such a comparison shows where exactly the problem lies, but it doesn’t yet explain its cause.

For example, low conversion may be linked to managers’ skills, lead quality, or the sales process. That’s why, after identifying a gap, you need to move on to analyzing causes.

At this stage, you need to establish whether the identified gap is actually caused by insufficient knowledge or skills.

You can test the cause through:

• knowledge assessments
• practical tasks
• observation of work
• analysis of typical errors
• interviews with employees and managers
• comparison of results across different teams or employees

Say, if employees know the procedure but regularly skip certain steps because of an inconvenient system interface, the problem isn’t training. If, however, they don’t know how to perform those steps correctly, it makes sense to define the corresponding development need.

At this stage, the training need must be tied to a specific gap and a measurable result that needs to improve.

How to evaluate the results and draw up an action plan?

The analysis results need to be turned into concrete decisions. For each identified need, define:

• what needs to be developed: knowledge, a skill, or a competency
• who it’s for: an individual employee, a group, or a department
• what training format is needed
• what result is expected after training
• how that result will be measured

For example:

• Problem: low conversion after the first contact
• Gap: managers don’t handle objections effectively enough
• Solution: hands-on training in objection handling
• Expected result: conversion growth from 13% to 18%
• Verification: comparing indicators before and after training

This format lets you link a training need → a program → an expected result → a performance indicator.

Which training needs analysis methods and data sources should you use?

You choose training needs analysis tools depending on what information you need: quantitative data on results, an assessment of competencies, or an understanding of a specific work situation. For a reliable conclusion, you should compare the results of different methods.

How to choose a method?

The method should be matched to the specific question:

For example, if the analysis showed low sales conversion, you can first check the indicators, then assess the managers’ skills, and only after that determine the specific content of the training.

The training needs analysis questions should help clarify the cause of the problem and identify a specific need, rather than simply collect wishes about courses.

For example, a training needs assessment form might ask:

• Which job tasks are the hardest to perform right now?
• At what stage do the biggest difficulties arise?
• What knowledge or skills are lacking to perform this task?
• Which mistakes recur most often?
• What would help improve the result?

Responses to a training needs assessment survey help check whether the problem identified from the indicators matches the real difficulties employees face in their work. If a KPI shows a deviation and employees name a specific skill that keeps them from performing the task, this provides additional confirmation of the training need.

Why is one method not enough?

A single method shows only part of the situation. A survey reflects employees’ perceptions, indicators show the actual result, and competency assessment shows the level of specific knowledge and skills.

Therefore, you should draw the final conclusion after comparing the data. If different sources point to the same gap, the training need has stronger justification.

For example: KPI shows low conversion → assessment reveals weak objection handling → interviews confirm difficulties at exactly this stage of the sale. In this case, the company has a sufficient basis for developing a specific training program.

Or consider a different situation: KPI shows low conversion → assessment shows that managers have the necessary skills → process analysis shows that some leads arrive with a low probability of purchase. In this case, the problem isn’t in managers’ competencies, so training won’t eliminate the cause of low conversion.

In other words, if different data sources don’t confirm gaps in knowledge or skills, you shouldn’t create a training need artificially. First, you need to eliminate the factor that directly affects the result.

How to prioritize training needs and turn the findings into an action plan

After the analysis, a company may identify several development needs, but not all of them require the same attention and resources. The next step is to determine which needs have the greatest impact on business results, record the analysis results, and use them to plan training.

How to determine which training needs have the greatest impact on performance?

If the analysis revealed several gaps, you should compare them by their impact on job and business results. A need has a higher priority if addressing it can significantly improve a result or reduce risks for the company.

To set priorities, you can consider:

• impact on business results — how much the problem affects sales, productivity, quality of work, costs, or other important indicators
• scale of the need — how many employees or departments have the same gap
• frequency of the problem — how regularly it occurs when performing job tasks
• risks — what financial, operational, or customer consequences ignoring the problem may lead to
• urgency — how quickly new knowledge or skills are needed, for example before launching a new product, system, or process

For example, the analysis may show two needs: some managers lack objection-handling skills, while employees of a new department lack the knowledge to work with the new CRM. If the first problem affects the results of a small group, while the second concerns the entire department and may delay the launch of a new process, the needs will have different priorities.

This approach helps determine which needs to address first and which can be moved to later stages of development.

What should a training needs analysis report include?

You should record the analysis results in a format that allows you to use them for further planning. A training needs assessment report should show the link between the problem, its cause, and the necessary actions.

The report may include:

• the business request or problem to be solved
• the current and required level of the result
• the identified gap in knowledge, skills, or competencies
• the cause of the gap, if it was established during the analysis
• the target audience — individual employees, a team, or a department
• the priority of the need and the rationale for its level
• recommended actions — training, a change to the process, tool, or other working conditions
• the expected result and how it will be evaluated later

For example, instead of a record like “sales training needed,” the report can state: low conversion after the first contact → insufficient objection-handling skills → sales managers → high priority → hands-on training → expected conversion growth.

This format lets you use the analysis results as the basis for a training needs analysis action plan.

How to use the analysis results to plan training?

The analysis results help determine which training activities to launch first, for which teams, and at what time. At the same time, the plan should include not all identified needs at once, but those with the highest priority that match the company’s current goals.

Needs can be divided into several categories:

• urgent — require quick training due to changes in processes, launches of new products or systems, or other business changes
• critical to results — directly affect the performance of a department or the company
• systemic — affect a large number of employees or several departments
• long-term — related to developing competencies the company will need in the future

This division helps build a consistent training plan instead of trying to address all identified needs at once.

For example, if a company is simultaneously switching to a new CRM, has a problem with sales conversion, and plans to develop its managers’ leadership competencies, these areas may have different timelines. Training on the new system can be tied to its launch date, sales skills development to the identified gap in results, and the leadership program can be scheduled as a long-term development track.

To manage this process systematically, companies can use HRM and LMS solutions. For example, the comprehensive HR platform SMART HCM & LMS lets you link employee development to company goals, plan training, manage learning activities, and conveniently track results.

In this model, needs analysis becomes the basis for consistent competency development planning: identified need → priority → training plan → expected result → evaluation. SMART HCM & LMS lets you combine this chain in a single digital environment and turn the analysis results into a systematic employee development process.

What does a practical training needs analysis example look like?

Consider a situation in which a support team isn’t meeting the set target for request handling speed. This training needs assessment example shows how to move from a problem to a specific training need and check the result once it has been addressed.

How to determine training needs using a support team as an example?

The company set a standard: 90% of customer requests must be handled within 10 minutes. The team’s actual figure is 72%.

This gap alone doesn’t mean employees need training. First, you need to determine at which stage delays occur and which competencies may affect them.

Suppose the analysis showed that employees spend a lot of time searching for information and don’t always know where to find the answer to a non-standard request. In that case, the need may lie in developing skills for working with the knowledge base and finding the information they need.

How to tell a problem that training will solve from a process problem?

Next, you need to check whether the identified cause is really related to competencies. If employees know how to use the knowledge base, but the information they need is missing from it or the system is slow, training won’t eliminate the delay.

In that case, the solution may be to update the knowledge base, change the information search process, or technically configure the system. If, however, the information is available but employees can’t find and use it quickly, training will be the appropriate solution.

How to evaluate the result after the training program?

After training, you need to compare the actual result with the figure recorded before the program started. For example, if the team had 72% of requests handled within 10 minutes, you can measure this indicator again after training.

If it rose to 88% and other working conditions remained unchanged, this gives grounds to assess the dynamics as positive. For a more accurate assessment, you should track the result not just once but over a defined period. This example shows the full chain: problem in the result → cause analysis → identifying the training need → training → re-measuring the result. It can also serve as a training needs analysis template for your own cases.

Training Needs Analysis FAQ

What is training needs analysis?

It’s a way to systematically determine which knowledge, skills, or competencies are lacking to perform specific job tasks at the required level.

How to conduct a training needs analysis?

You need to collect data on work performance, identify development areas, verify their cause, and compile a list of well-founded needs.

How often should a training needs analysis be conducted?

It should be conducted regularly and, in addition, before large-scale changes, the launch of new processes or technologies, or the emergence of new role requirements.

Who should participate in a training needs analysis?

Usually, the process is coordinated by an HR or L&D specialist together with department heads who know the specifics of the work and the teams’ expected results.

Is an employee survey enough to identify training needs?

No, a survey should be supplemented with objective data to separate the subjective feeling of lacking knowledge from a real development need.

How can you determine whether a problem can be solved through training?

You need to check whether the identified problem can be eliminated specifically by changing the employee’s knowledge, skills, or behavior, rather than by other organizational solutions.

What are the three levels of training needs analysis?

The three levels cover the organization, a specific job role, and an individual employee, which lets you see needs at both the business level and the performer level.

Turn training needs analysis into a systematic process

If it’s hard to link training results to performance indicators, employee needs are identified unsystematically, and training programs don’t always match the business’s current tasks, or if the company is planning changes to processes, teams, or ways of working, it’s worth moving development management into a single digital environment.

The SMART HCM & LMS platform helps take needs analysis, planning, and training organization to a new level through specialized modules, development management tools, and analytics. Request a consultation, and the SMART business team will help you choose a solution that fits your company’s goals and processes.