Training Needs Assessment Services that Work
“I think we learned a lot in this project. I would definitely look for ways to use your training needs assessment services again. I’m interested in finding ways to do periodic follow-ups to assess progress. The final output was truly a collaboration between our two organizations.
The payoff was the correlation between assessment results and actual performance.”
Director | US Sales Operations | Fortune 500 Technology Firm
With US corporations spending over $100 billion on employee training last year, it is malpractice that 70% of leaders report significant skills gaps in their workforce. Too many corporate training programs either bypass a proper skill gap assessment or they use assessments that are not only statistically invalid, but often inhibit participant trust, decrease learner relevance, and waste everyone’s time.
As stated by Robert A. Humphrey, “An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.”
We pride ourselves on a proven training needs assessment service that finds the root cause, creates alignment, initiates the change process, and targets development areas that have the most business AND people impact.
Our training needs assessment services support our core belief in the Transfer of Training™ and the required impact on the business through increased revenue, decreased costs, and/or increased productivity. Our company, group, and individual level assessment tools provide powerful data to:
Training needs assessments are offered as an on-demand service. There is no hardware, software, or related infrastructure to purchase and maintain. The end result is a highly available, scalable, and secure application available to participants 24/7 anywhere on the globe.
We believe that the purpose of a training needs assessment should be to answer the questions: “What is holding us back?” and “Where should we focus?”
We also believe that skill assessments should be customized to each unique environment, be outcome-based (not opinion-based), and compare skills to actual performance to guide impactful strategies.
In addition to Leadership Simulation Assessments for High Stakes Roles, 360-degree Interviews, People Manager Assessment Centers, Sales Rep Assessment Simulations, and focus groups, LSA Global offers three proven online options that are augmented by key leadership interviews:
1. What Are the Critical “Money Making” Skills?
Leader Assess™ training needs assessment surveys are used to identify the “Money Making” skills. The Leader Assess™ is an online training assessment completed by executives and leaders to help them prioritize skills in three areas:
Created from a bank of 150+ behaviorally-based questions, the assessment is a proven tool to drive executive alignment, buy-in, and focus. View a sample training assessment question Leader Assess™.
2. Where Are the Key Gaps and Priorities?
Team Assess™ training needs assessment surveys are used to answer the question “What are the strengths and limiters of my team or target audience?” related to our business. The Team Assess™ needs assessment survey is completed by the “masses” to help identify:
Team Assess™ is a proven tool to drive alignment, buy-in, and focus for a specific target audience.
3. What Should I Do Differently?
Individual Development™ Plans are used to answer the question “What can I do about it?” The customized profiles are used to help drive individual performance coaching sessions. Combined with the Leader Assess™ and Team Assess™, the Individual Development™ Plans are an invaluable development tool for one-on-one follow through and development.
LSA Global can deliver each survey in more than a dozen languages simultaneously including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Swedish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai.
If you would like to learn how our training needs assessment expertise has helped leading organizations across multiple industries succeed, please contact us.
A training needs assessment is a structured process used to identify the specific skills, knowledge, and performance gaps preventing employees, teams, or leaders from achieving desired business outcomes. A well-executed assessment helps organizations focus development investments where they will have the greatest impact on revenue growth, productivity, leadership effectiveness, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. Rather than relying on assumptions, companies use data-driven assessments to uncover root causes, prioritize development areas, and align training with strategic business goals.
The most effective way to identify skill gaps is to compare current performance against the competencies required for success in a specific role or business strategy. This typically includes leadership interviews, surveys, assessments, simulations, focus groups, and performance analysis. High-quality training needs assessments evaluate both organizational priorities and individual capabilities to determine what is holding performance back and where targeted development can create measurable business results.
Conducting a training needs assessment before implementing training significantly improves the likelihood of measurable success. Organizations can avoid wasted time, irrelevant content, and low learner engagement by ensuring training addresses the right priorities from the beginning. Benefits often include better executive alignment, stronger employee buy-in, more customized learning solutions, improved coaching and development plans, clearer baseline metrics, and greater transfer of training back to the job.
An effective training needs assessment typically involves executives, managers, HR leaders, frontline employees, and other key stakeholders depending on the business objective. Leaders often help define critical “money-making” competencies and strategic priorities, while employees provide insight into operational challenges, strengths, and development opportunities. Combining leadership perspectives with broad employee input creates a more accurate picture of organizational capability gaps and development priorities.
When aligned with business strategy, a training needs assessment helps organizations focus development resources on the capabilities that matter most. By targeting the right leadership, sales, management, communication, or operational skills, companies can improve employee performance, accelerate productivity, strengthen customer relationships, increase engagement, and support strategic execution. Organizations that link assessments directly to measurable business outcomes are far more likely to see sustainable performance improvement from their learning investments.
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