Training Need Assessment (TNA)

Align Your Training Spend to Meet Business Goals

Commonly, organizations across the world look at L&D / Training spend as discretionary or driven only by compliance needs. However, when L&D efforts consciously align with business goals, organizations can:

  • Prevent revenue leakage
  • Minimize losses due to non-compliance
  • Boost win ratios
  • Accelerate innovation
  • Improve both topline and bottom line
Bar graph showing team skill benchmark comparison
Sample Team Skill Benchmark
Enlarged bar graph showing team skill benchmark comparison

Signs that your Business Goals are Not Driving Training Programs

Sales & Customer Success

  1. Struggles with negotiation skills and low closure rates
  2. Inability to ask the right questions at the right time during discovery and demos
  3. Problems mining existing relationships for new wins
  4. Insufficient product knowledge
  5. High customer churn rate

Operations and Engineering

  1. Repeated non-compliance
  2. Inefficient utilization of resources
  3. Recurring complaints of delays and high error rates
  4. Poor communication between teams
  5. Poor problem-solving skills

Finance and Accounting

  1. Budget overruns and cash flow issues
  2. Delayed financial reporting and inaccurate forecasting
  3. Inefficient risk management
  4. Slow invoicing and vendor payment delays
  5. Poor understanding of policies

Pin-Pointed Training Can Eliminate These Signs of Misalignment

Most of these problems can be addressed with pin-pointed training - giving the right training to the individuals or teams that need it, rather than forcing it on everyone indiscriminately.

Unfortunately, many organizations adopt a “spray and pray” approach to training. When you can identify specific skill gaps and the requisite competence for various roles, your training efforts can easily align and work in tandem with what the organization truly needs. It’s a clear win-win.

Individual skill benchmark visualization
Sample Individual Skill Benchmark
Enlarged view of individual skill benchmark visualization

How Can Organizations Identify Pin-Pointed Training Needs?

A Training Need Assessment (TNA) is a globally accepted approach to identifying pin-pointed training needs. The primary goal of TNA is to ensure that training programs and budgets are closely aligned with organizational business goals.

How Does TNA (Training Need Analysis) Work?

1. Identify Key Roles

Pin-point key roles in your organization that are central to improving key performance metrics. Some examples are Sales Development, Customer Success & Customer Experience, Account Managers, and Executives. See more…

2. Articulate the Expectations from Their Roles (Job Descriptions)

Detail the job descriptions of these key roles. Specifically, verbalize how these roles tie with organizational goals and direction.

If you do not have written job descriptions, look at some of our suggested roles from your industry. These might help.

3. List Specific Skills Needed for Those Key Roles

All roles need specific skills. The best performers have both hard and soft skills needed in their roles. Job descriptions combined with the right skill set complete the perfect persona. See sample skillsets for a few roles in your industry.

4. Conduct a Thorough TNA (Training Need Assessment)

An effective TNA objectively compares your team’s abilities with those of the perfect persona that can help boost organizational success. See our sample TNA questions

5. Identify Skill Gaps

  • Team level
  • Individual level

6. Take Specific Remediation Steps

  • Reading material (blogs and articles) based on individual competency levels
  • Reference videos that help hone job-specific skills
  • Suggested books with inputs and guidance from industry leaders
  • Micro-learning courses - bite-sized, consumable content built for mobile

Try out TNA from PlayAblo

FAQ

1. Does PlayAblo have ready to use training need assessments for roles in my industry?

We have ready to use TNAs across multiple industries for key customer facing roles. See our sample list here. However, if your industry or a key role you are looking for is not covered just reach out to us. We should be able to help create it for you quickly.

2. The job description (JD) you have used to create the training assessment varies from my organization’s JD. Can I get a customized assessment?

Yes. Just share with us the JD you use, and we will customize the assessment for you.

3. What kind of questions does PlayAblo use in the TNA assessments? Is it just theory?

Our assessments are created to cover three types of questions:
a. Theoretical understanding,
b. Numerical (where applicable) and,
c. Scenario based.

These questions aim to assess both the fundamental of the skill being evaluated as well as its practical application in real-world situations.

4. I have some assessment questions of my own. Can those be included in the TNA?

Absolutely. Please talk to us and we can advise you on how to include those questions in the TNA for the roles of your interest.

5. What is the duration of a typical TNA assessment?

The assessments are designed to assess multiple skills associated with each role. The length of each assessment is dependent upon the number of skills being evaluated. Typically, a skill has 20 MCQ questions associated with it.

6. I have a diverse workforce speaking multiple languages.

You can get your workforce to take assessments in various Indian and Foreign languages. Here are the Indian languages we support:
a. Hindi
b. Bengali
c. Marathi
d. Tamil
e. Telugu
f. Kannada
g. Gujarati
h. Malayalam
i. Punjabi
j. Odiya
k. Assamese

7. What kind of report will I get after the TNA is completed?

You will get a summary of your entire team’s performance in a graphical bar chart indicating the areas of strength and areas that need remediation. You will also get individual team member’s performance and personalized remediation recommendations for each of them. Ask us for a sample report.

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Sample Team Competency Breakup

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8. How much will it cost to conduct a TNA with PlayAblo?

The cost depends upon the size of your team and the number of skills being assessed. The total cost per learner starts as low as Rs. 50/- per assessment. Talk to us and get a firm quote, specific to your needs.

9. Will your assessment also provide me with a Competency Mapping for my team?

Yes. Conducting a TNA will also provide insights into the competency mapping of the entire team. You will also receive a comprehensive Competency Heat Map. Here is an example.

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Sample Competency Heatmap

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10. How soon can the TNA be conducted for my specific needs?

If our ready-made packages for your industry work for you then you can get it setup within a week. For customization it would depend upon your specific requirements.