Making The Connection: Effective ways to link training needs to organizational goals

An effective training needs assessment is the foundation for building a workplace learning strategy aligned with strategic organizational goals. Small to medium-sized employers typically lack the in-house resources to take this crucial step.

Making the Connection: Effective Ways to Link Training Needs to Organizational Goals describes the results of a knowledge gathering project, undertaken by the Centre for Workplace Skills in partnership with the Centre for Learning Impact, to identify and document Canadian and international practices in organizational training needs assessment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In addition, the report examines why organizational needs assessment is important, and the linkages between needs assessment, training and successful execution of business strategy.

The project explores real-life examples of promising organizational needs assessment tools, resources, models or practices. Eleven cases were selected as potentially useful tools or practices for SMEs and documented with case summaries in the Best Practices Database.

This report will be of interest to those who influence training decisions, both internally to organizations (supervisors, mangers, and human resources professionals) and externally (training providers, consultants, and decision makers at various levels of government).

In this report:

Part One: Introduction to Organizational Needs Assessment
• Scope of practices included under the term 'needs assessment'
• Level of needs assessment usage in SMEs
• Exemplary practices emerging from training and development literature
• Key findings of the literature review

Part Two: Useful Tools, Models, and Practices
• Organizational needs assessment tools, resources, models or practices
• 11 cases selected as potentially useful tools or practices for SMEs. Full summaries of each practice appear in the Centre's Best Practices Database

Part Three: Core Issues for Promoting Organizational Needs Assessment
• Focus groups and key informant interviews
• Summary of results synthesizing key observations and providing highlights of useful practices from case reports

Part Four: Recommendations for Knowledge Exchange
• Recommendations on how to share useful practices to maximize uptake

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For more information, please contact: info@workplaceskills.ca