Chapter 8
Understanding the Training Needs, Real and Perceived

Following the previous chapter which advocated the need for breadth in surveying the environment in which a training need has arisen, this chapter will focus on the depth of investigation and analysis that is required to identify training needs precisely so that the training is prepared for the right people, with the most appropriate content and the most effective methods of delivery. This 'understanding' process is shown in Figure 8.1. The training needs can be assessed at three levels - at the organizational, the group and the individual level. They are then related to the outputs of the previous stage - the 'training context frame' - and the areas where knowledge and skills are deficient (the competence gap) are identified. This then reveals the learning gap and thereby the training needs. These are then brought together in the form of a training strategy.

Understanding organizational training needs

While the very particular type of issue, described above, is typical of the challenge that training managers and consultants regularly face, we should consider, before moving on to look at group and individual requirements, the possibility that an organization may wish to carry out a complete analysis of the gaps that exist between current levels of competence and the current and future competences required of all or a number of its management groups.

By a competence we simply mean the ability of people to apply a relevant element of skill or knowledge in a business situation. This can be a 'hard' business skill, such as interpreting financial data, or a 'soft' skill, such as motivating a team. It must be pointed out that this is a slightly different use of the word compared with the previous chapter, where it was used more generally in the context of organizational competences to refer to the things that the organization was or needed to be particularly good at in order to succeed in implementing its strategy.

This all-encompassing approach to training needs analysis is not a frequent occurrence but it may be required from time to time when the organization wishes to fundamentally review its training approach and philosophy. This can occur as organizations move between levels two and three or three and four of the 'levels of training commitment model' described in Chapter 6. It can also arise from foreseen changes in market conditions, or from a deliberate change in direction of the business, or from the implementation of an initiative such as Investors in People. It requires a total review of business strategy to identify those management competences required in the future which are different from those required in the past.

When such a fundamental review is required it will usually include, as a first step, the redefinition of the skills, knowledge and competences needed in each function and job. Then a process would need to be established to measure each manager's current level of skills, knowledge and competence against the new requirement to identify the gaps that need to be addressed. There are broadly two approaches that are used: competence gap analysis and benchmarking.

Competence Gap Analysis

In short, the major challenge in assessing levels of competence in this way for groups of international managers is one of language and context. As an example, using the standards published by the Management Charter Initiative, take Unit 12, Element 1, Performance Criteria 6 of Management NVQ Level 5 in the section dealing with competences needed during a downsizing exercise - 'Your plans for redeployment take account of the personal qualities, situation and preferences of those involved.' Imagine a scenario where there is a plan for significant restructuring of a multi-national organization in many countries across the world. It is necessary to make a judgement about the competence levels of many managers in many different countries on this particular performance criterion, amongst others. Imagine how differently people from a range of cultures would be likely to interpret the phrases 'personal qualities, situation and preferences'. Even where we share a common tongue and live in a homogeneous culture, so much individual judgement is involved that it is extremely difficult to determine objectively what this standard means. Attempting to do it worldwide, whether by translating the standard into local languages, or relying on a person with English as a second or third language to interpret, the challenge is significant.

Consequently most organizations will, within general guidelines, leave the development of performance criteria within competency systems to HR specialists at the local level except possibly for the most senior jobs.

Competence gap analysis is widely used in the USA, Germany and the UK, less in other parts of the world. A development of the last two years in these countries has been to recognize that we should not only be determining current gaps in competence, but should also look forward to probable changes in the business environment and identify those competences which are likely to be required in the future.

Benchmarking

Another method used to assess where organizational training needs exist is to measure the performance of particular parts of the organization against the performance of other parts of its own organization or against similar organizations, sometimes competitors. This is usually known as 'benchmarking', and is a valid method of identifying differences in levels of performance, although it will often require a process such as competence gap analysis to determine the reasons for the differences in the levels of performance and to pinpoint the precise area of the training need. Benchmarking is more widely applied than competence gap analysis, with developing countries regularly using it to compare improvements in their performance with more developed areas of the world. For instance, manufacturing performance in some Brazilian businesses has been improved dramatically by investigating areas of 'people performance' in the factories compared with Europe and the USA. Usually the training improvements that are made are part of a Total Quality Management initiative and they do involve a detailed analysis of skill and knowledge gaps as the basis for developing programmes of training.

Defining training needs at the organizational level, as described above, is not a frequent occurrence in organizations, but at the level of the functional group, or the project team, it is much more common.

Understanding group training needs

In the Swiss example in Chapter 7, the group was perceived to have a common need to learn to work together more effectively, managing the conflicts that arose from different personal and cultural experiences.

Clearly the administration of questionnaires requires great sensitivity in some cultures as they are probing areas of knowledge where inadequacies almost certainly exist. The answers may also imply some inadequacy in training that has already been received. In both respects there will be some reticence in giving forthright answers in many parts of the Far East, both for fear of loss of face and criticism from the local management. The interviewer needs to be someone who has gained high levels of trust with both managers and employees. Even in Europe and the USA, answers are more likely to be honest if the interviewer is known to be discreet and trustworthy. The issue for the interviewer in these parts of the world is likely to be the level of validity of the answers, rather than the lack of answers.

Another practical implication is the cost of face-to-face interviews when conducted in places distant from where the project is centred. Local interviewers will be cheaper to use in this sense and may be better in terms of phrasing questions sensitively and respecting the desire to avoid some sensitive issues. They will, however, need to be carefully briefed to use the questionnaires so that important responses are properly recorded.

Sometimes, for both cost and speed reasons, it may be appropriate to administer the questionnaire via the company's intranet or even mail it to recipients. While this has much to commend it, there can be a feeling that the responses will not be treated confidentially and that line managers may be able to access them. This is obviously as much an organizational, as it is an international, culture issue. In addition, with any form of self-completion questionnaire, the amount of thought that has gone into its completion will vary. Was it completed quickly as just one item of the manager's 'to do' list, or was each question answered in detail and were there additional comments over and above the minimum asked for? Further, different cultures react differently to deadlines so the responses may not all be returned by the time they are needed. As a Frenchman once said to us on a training course, the problem of being late is only a problem to those who are punctual.

When information is collected as a result of using a questionnaire or interviewing a number of individuals, great care needs to be taken to ensure that the subsequent analysis is carried out objectively. Clearly, if the same or a similar answer is given by a large proportion of the respondents, significant weight should be attached to it. If only a small minority make a particular point, the training consultant needs to take care not to give this point such weight, even if it is a point with which the training consultant agrees wholeheartedly! The analysis should stand up to inspection. In fact, the client should be invited to review the analysis.

Understanding individual training needs

The Performance Appraisal

Most organizations employing international managers derive individual training needs from an appraisal or development review system conducted at least annually. The quality of the training needs assessment carried out by individual managers in this way is typically very mixed. As a result, the needs are satisfied with varying levels of commitment. There is a trend, as organizations move towards levels three and four of organizational training commitment, at least in the USA and Europe for managers to be increasingly responsible for their own development and to take the initiative in arranging their own learning. This trend also includes involving their direct boss to give them coaching in at least the task-related needs, although it has to be said that many bosses find it difficult to give sufficient time to this particular responsibility.

Performance appraisal is surprisingly widely used. In a group of 18 MBA students in their late twenties, with work experience on every continent between them, every one had received an appraisal with a discussion on development needs within the last year. Experiences were extremely varied and there was a cultural flavour depending on the level of power distance in that society. However, even in the USA and Europe where performance appraisal has been common practice for over 30 years, its value in defining genuine training needs varies tremendously depending on the culture of the organization, the relationship of appraiser and appraisee, and the skill of the appraiser in relating levels of performance in particular aspects of a job to a training need.

For this reason it is good practice to check out the validity of the training needs identified at the appraisal by holding discussions with the appraisee, appraiser and possibly peers and more senior managers who are in a position to comment objectively on the appraisee's work.

A review of the 'development needs' section of the appraisal form across the whole range of managers in an organization, checked out with these supplementary conversations, can reveal a considerable volume of similar training needs amongst managers working for the same organization in a range of different countries. Typically the common training needs will include a number of interpersonal and leadership skills, which can be dealt with in groups, followed up by individual coaching from the direct boss or a senior colleague. Other training needs, for instance in areas of specific professional or technical knowledge, are likely to exist amongst far smaller numbers of managers in a single organization, making the training of managers in groups a project on a more limited scale.

The Assessment Centre and Psychometric Questionnaires

Another fruitful source of training needs is the assessment centre, whether this plays a part in initial recruitment, consideration for promotion, or the derivation of development needs. Assessment centres tend to reveal a very similar range of training needs to the appraisal form. Assessment centres are also a worldwide phenomenon, and discussions with those who have taken part in them in a wide range of different societies reveal a common feeling that they give a more objective view of personal development needs than do the boss/subordinate performance appraisal discussions.

The most commonly identified training needs for managers arising from either assessment centres or performance appraisal are still in the area of interpersonal skills as they were when the very first surveys were commissioned by personnel management associations in the 1970s. Consequently, it is valuable to consider briefly another useful tool in defining these needs for individuals.

There are types of personality questionnaire that are helpful in pinpointing individual needs for interpersonal skills development. It is advisable to use questionnaires that identify dimensions of personality where skills can be developed, rather than those which define a personality type. A good example are the questionnaires which measure dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance, particularly those systems which make an assessment of the requirements of the job on each of the four dimensions as well as an assessment of the individual. These systems, which all derive from Marston's work in the 1920s, have been used to assess working strengths and areas for development since the 1950s. It is, of course, extremely important to be sensitive to local cultural beliefs in administering these instruments. For instance, in France it would still be true at this time that managers give graphology (handwriting analysis) more credence than they do psychometric instruments. The opposite would be true in most other parts of the world!

Job Analysis

It is also appropriate to mention here the most traditional method for identifying individual training needs, although it is now recognized as being rather static in the context of today's fast-moving workplace. Traditionally the job would be analysed in terms of the skills and knowledge required, and then the current levels of skill and knowledge of the individual would be matched against the results of this analysis to identify the gaps. In addition to this, the common errors made in the job would be analysed to identify the skills and knowledge required to avoid repetition of these errors. This aspect of the analysis certainly has a value in trying to prevent the same mistakes being made time and again by generations of managers during their tenure in a particular job.

Underlying the process of job analysis is the premise that a job can be broken down into discrete tasks that can be tackled and improved individually. It is a very logical approach which will have greater resonance in cultures such as Germany and Switzerland than in Brazil or South Africa.

Observation

We should recognize that, although all these objective techniques of identifying managers training needs are reasonably well known, the majority of training requirements are probably identified by observation. Senior managers in all cultures observe and discuss the behaviour of their subordinates and jointly decide that some specific training should improve their performance. When determining how the training budget should be spent, they may even include in their assessment observations made to them by customers and other outside contacts. Although perhaps less objective than the other methods we have discussed, this method will continue to have real value, if only because it carries with it an implied management commitment to use training to bring about an improvement.

Outputs from the Understand stage

The analysis of organization, group and individual competences in relationship to those required will lead to the identification of the gap that learning needs to fill and, from there, the training requirement. For example, in the case of the law firm referred to at the beginning of this chapter, the organizational imperative was to improve client service, one element of which was the group requirement for solicitors to dispatch legal documents more speedily. The skill that needed to be enhanced was that of improving the quality of their dictation. The training strategy, which is the output from the understand stage, identifies the main ways in which this will be brought about.

Clearly there are usually a number of alternatives available, from self-study, distance learning and Internet-based learning through to in-house tailor-made training programmes and on-the-job coaching. These alternatives are not necessarily mutually exclusive and indeed a blended solution may be most appropriate. Each alternative has its advantages and disadvantages which are well known and we do not intend to go over them again in this book. Our objective is to add some additional dimensions that need to be borne in mind when training international managers.

Costs generally tend to be higher. International managers need to travel to training locations and generally expect a higher standard of accommodation and facilities than in a local situation. Because of these higher overhead costs, training is often of longer duration. Obviously these considerations do not apply to distance or self-learning where the main issue is one of time-zone differences.

The logistics of conducting international training courses tend to be more complex than holding local events. Organizing flights, finding locations that provide reasonably easy access for all participants takes time. Finding trainers with in-depth experience in dealing with multi-cultural participants may prove more difficult.

In training, as with much else in life, you get what you pay for. Hence more costly forms of training tend to be, though not always, more effective. With international managers, their fluency in the language of the training will have a significant impact. With less personal forms of training there is less opportunity for trainees to ask for help on the meaning of words, although they will be more able to proceed at their own pace and try to find out themselves. Another added benefit of bringing international managers together is that it provides opportunities for networking, which can prove valuable.

Travelling to and spending a few days in a foreign location can be attractive and motivating to participants as compared to more distant forms of learning.

A general framework for evaluating alternatives is shown in Table 8.1. For a particular competence (dictation skills in the above case), each alternative can be judged on a qualitative basis against a number of dimensions. If it is assessed as good then it can be given a score of three, average = two and poor = one. Thus a training method that is low cost, easy to implement, very effective, a good cultural fit and will be attractive to the trainees would score three on each of these dimensions and have a total score of 15. If needed, more particular training solutions can be added such as, for example, distinguishing between an internal course led by internal or external trainers, or combining some e-learning with mentoring and so on.

The training strategy can now be developed and a suitable format is shown in Table 8.2. Each training intervention is given a title and the competences it aims to improve are listed. Key is specifying the level that learners need to achieve - from merely gaining an appreciation, to understanding, to having the ability to do or gaining mastery of the materials. The type or mode of training is then described. For example, one training event bringing together groups of no more than 20 managers combined on-line learning of the basic principles with a post-course project activity. The implementation time-scale for each element needs to be identified, and the way the learning is to be incorporated into the organization detailed. The latter might include project work, briefing of the participants' managers on what they need to follow up on, and so on.

If there are different training solutions planned to address different competences, then a training strategy is required for each.

The situation is made even more complex when a company wishes to deploy a particular training structure across a number of countries. This is often driven by a desire

Table 8.2 The training strategy

for uniform implementation of a centrally driven initiative such as Process Re-engineering or Total Quality Management. Local language skills are frequently needed, and a process needs to be put in place to train local trainers and coaches to meet centrally driven training standards.

Summary

Within the training context framework derived from 'survey, the previous SUCCESS stage, training needs can be identified for the whole organization, a group of employees, or for individuals.

Training needs analysis for the whole organization at one time is rare, and when it does happen it would usually be closely related either to changes in the level of training commitment in the organization or to a particular trend in business results. The main formal methods used, particularly in Europe and the USA, are:

• competence gap analysis
• benchmarking.

It is more usual for needs to be identified for individuals or groups and then aggregated to form a training plan for the organization.

The following methods are the most common for individuals and groups:

• observation of managers behaviours
• job analysis by skills and knowledge
• development review reports from performance appraisal
• assessment centres
• psychometric questionnaires.

Based on the outputs from the training needs assessment, alternative mechanisms for delivering the training can be evaluated and a training strategy determined.

Think of the changes that are likely to take place in your own or a client's organization over the next two years. Typically there will be changes due to new technology, new systems, customer requirements for new products or services, combining or splitting of functions, geographic expansion or contraction, requirements for more effective performance, and so on. Use the Action plan to help you think through which jobs are likely to change and the most appropriate process to use to identify the training needs precisely.

Action plan