Could they do *it* in the past?

Here are two questions that should be asked during a needs assessments to help ensure that you are not designing and developing training unnecessarily, and also to ensure that the training you ARE creating is appropriate for the "gap" that needs to be augmented.

Question #1: Have the learners been able to do ____ in the past?

Question #2: Have the learners had training on ____ in the past?

Let's look at why each of these questions is important to ask. 

Have they been able to do ________ in the past?

Typically, if an individual or group has been able to successfully complete a task in the past, and suddenly are not able to, it is not because they forgot how to do it. It's more likely that conditions within the work environment have changed. Look at factors such as:

• Have new metrics been put in to place? (causing people to do their work in a less thorough manner?)

• Has a new process been added which conflicts with the standard operating procedure?

• Are people incentivized to do the job differently / poorly?

For instance: In a call center environment, CSRs can be incentivized to solve a consumer's problem on the first call or they can be incentivized to complete as many calls per hours as possible. Typically, those are two competing end goals. So, if you have workers who have been able to do a process or task in the past, and suddenly they are not - the last thing you should assume is that the fault lies with the workers. 

Have they had training on this topic in the past?

If the answer to this is "yes," then the next question is: Why didn't that training stick? Or... did the company forget they had a training program already in place?

Any new skill will fritter away if it is not used. Often people go through training but then get back on the job and have to catch up on a backlog of work. In order to catch up quickly, they will resort to their "old way" of doing things. This aligns with the bullet points above - are trainees incentivized to "keep up the pace," or to do things in the "new and improved" way? If the latter, they will need time to practice and become proficient.

In other instances the newly trained individual simply isn't given the opportunity to put in to practice what they have learned. Example: One of our clients put learners through a 12-week, job-specific training program but then assigned them to a starter-job for 6 months before they were allowed to do the job they were just trained to do. It was "efficient" for the company to give people the 12-weeks of training right after they were newly hired, rather than take them off the job later on. But the newly trained individuals weren't allowed to actually put their skills in to practice until they had "paid their dues" by being on the job for 6 months or more.

It's tempting to jump right in and solve the problem - but first step back and ask "why does this problem exist?"

*Credit to Bob Mager for the basis of these questions.