Summit Credit Union is performing relatively well based on its $13 million savings by its members. The company has a system that ensures its employees are well-versed in their jobs by offering them instructor-led training and employing e-learning. However, a problem has been detected with the company's new lenders in that they get into their jobs without the necessary skills, information, and knowledge required to perform their duties effectively. The lending training curriculum structure has been identified as the potential cause of the failure to instill the necessary skills. This problem needs to be addressed to avoid future issues, which may adversely affect the company. A needs assessment can be conducted to determine whether the lenders are getting into their jobs without the necessary skills and whether the training structure is to blame for the same.
Needs Assessment
A company's goals and objectives are the determinants of how it structures its operations and its strategies to succeed. However, certain gaps may exist in the company that may jeopardize the entire process of reaching the set objectives. Some of the common gaps that exist include skills, knowledge, and information. Therefore, there is a need to conduct a needs assessment to identify the gaps and address them urgently to ensure that the company remains on course. The needs assessment should comprise the entire population of new lenders as this is the group that has been found to need a better training program. There are steps that one can follow to conduct an effective needs assessment.
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The first thing to do in conducting the needs assessment is identifying the business need. To determine where the gap exists in the business, an analysis is conducted. This analysis allows the company to focus its efforts on the training areas that have been identified to require restructuring. Effectively determining where the problem lies calls for a good understanding of the organization's operational structure and the staff members' expectations. A clear understanding of the company's expectations of its staff helps discover whether the employees have met the criteria to enhance their functioning towards achieving the goals and objectives. If they are yet to meet the criteria, then the training structure should be checked to see if it needs altering.
Personal analysis is another way of conducting a needs assessment. This process entails analyzing how effective each staff member is performing their duties and then determining whether they possess the skills and knowledge required for that task. Numerous human resource divisions have successfully used this approach in their organizations, and the results have been found to be accurate in analyzing the need for training staff members and developing an effective training program that instills the required expertise for the job (Mazhisham, 2019).
Task analysis is aimed at examining what employees ought to do to perform their duties effectively. This analysis outlines all the tasks that an employee is supposed to perform and the skills, knowledge, and attitudes required and then evaluates whether they have these aspects. Suppose it is determined that the employees lack the skills and knowledge to perform their tasks well. In that case, the assessor proposes a training program to instill the required expertise. If there is a training program, but the employees still do not have the skills and knowledge, it is identified that the company's training program may need to be restructured (Samdi, 2007). For Summit Credit Union, task analysis would spell out the tasks that the new lenders are responsible for and the skills required to perform them. If it is deemed that they lack the expertise, then an overhaul of the training program should be considered.
References
Mazhisham, P. H. (2018). Identification of Training needs assessment in organizational context. International Journal of Modern Trends in Social Science , 1 (5), 20-30.
Samdi. (2007). Training Manual Module 2: Training Needs Assessment.
