Contribute to learning needs

When you are working with developing an individual or a team, it is essential to gather information on their performance from relevant sources. The first place you would start would be to look at the organisation's requirements.

For example, to undertake a job correctly, a worker must be able to:

Each position will have a different set of capabilities that the business requires. These capabilities may be at the individual, team, and business levels.

At CBSA, Mae and Josh both work in the IT team. Mae is a Systems Analyst and Josh is an IT Support Specialist. They have different individual capability requirements for their roles even though they are in the same team. 

There are also shared capability requirements. These shared capability requirements are at the team and business levels.

For example, Mae and Josh share the same team business plan and team goals. Similarly, Mae and Josh share the same business goals as Zane from the HR team due to the overall corporate vision, mission goals and objectives that are the responsibility of all workers.

Your organisation will have procedures in place on how they support and implement the learning and development needs of the team. Knowing and understanding the organisation's business learning needs and goals is important. It will ensure you develop learning plans that work with the organisation's goals and procedures.

Watch the following video to introduce the fundamentals of employee training and development.

Policies and procedures

Policies and procedures are there to guide how you will manage learning and professional development. Following are examples of policies that are relevant to developing the learning needs of teams and individuals. 

• Performance management.
• Privacy and confidentiality.
• WHS.
• Equal opportunity.
• Diversity.
• Learning and development.

Team members should be encouraged to contribute to developing workplace policies and procedures for learning and development. We can do this by asking individuals to:

• participate in feedback sessions and complete feedback forms post-training and development
• take an active role in identifying courses and training suitable to an individual's role
• provide self-evaluations
• point out difficulties at the point of delivery
• be involved in shared decision making.

Sources of information

You can seek information on an individual's performance from various sources to help identify and support their learning and development needs.

To get a holistic picture and different perspectives on an individual's strengths and areas of improvement, other sources that would be beneficial to gather can include:

• via a reference check from a past employer during the recruitment process
• through observation of the worker's performance
• through feedback from other staff members, including—
  • the managers who have dealt with the worker
  • team members who work alongside the worker
  • other workers in the business who have worked in collaboration with the worker
  • stakeholders who have had involvement with the worker
• client satisfaction survey results
• identifying courses and workshops attended
• performance reports
• customer surveys/complaints
• competency gap analysis report.

You must be professional and fair in collecting this information. You must not disclose private information about the worker, including the results of their performance reviews or any performance discussions.

An example of a tool that collects information from relevant sources is a 360 Degree Feedback Survey. It takes in the various perspectives from key stakeholders such as peers, subordinates and managers.

Learn more about this tool here.

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When identifying individual learning and development needs, involving the individual in the discussion is essential. It opens the conversation to ask questions and provide feedback.

The individual will:

• have an awareness of what areas they feel confident in
• understand what areas they would like to improve
• be able to identify their interests and areas for improvement
• be able to identify where they could grow and potentially provide an expert service for the business
• have control of their learning and development.

You confirm the learning plan with the individual by:

• involving the team member in formal discussions and meetings about their learning needs
• collaborating with the individual on what types of learning they need and how they prefer to learn
• allowing the individual to see the learning plan once drafted and approve of the plan before commencing; they may like to modify or adjust it based on their needs.

Individuals can self-evaluate their training requirements by being encouraged to:

• suggest training ideas for learning opportunities at team meetings
• email their manager and the learning and development department with a training request
• regularly self-evaluate their job through formal evaluations and a supportive culture that encourages growth and development.¹

Formal assessments

Watch this video for an example of how an organisation identifies the training needs of the individual or team.

As the video has described, a business needs to undertake a formal assessment of the training needs per individual based on the required tasks within their position in the company.

You also use these assessments to:

• choose and select individual staff, based on their performance, for different types of training that will benefit the employee and the business
• review and update training needs regularly to align with the workplace goals and best practices.

At CBSA, Zane nominated Jesse, one of the team members he is mentoring, to undertake leadership training relevant to her role. This training has helped to make Jesse a subject matter expert in her field. Jesse can now train, monitor and mentor other team members in her area of expertise. Team members at CBSA are encouraged to nominate activities that they would like to undertake relevant to their role and the business.

Collecting and analysing data

Once all individuals have completed their training needs analysis, the skills required to perform duties are collated. The information will display training needs at both the individual and team levels. The business may then categorise these skills into components such as:

Maree is interested in the creative side of her role. Zane organised for her to attend a workshop on advanced design for websites. She was so engaged and enthusiastic to learn new skills that she quickly adapted these skills at work and gave the company's website a much-needed makeover.

Exploring the interests of individuals and allocating tasks to fit is an effective way to improve morale and succeed in business priorities.

The following video outlines how to assess and design the training process.

Further research

• Visit the Business Tasmania website for an example of a training needs analysis template - Template – Training needs analysis (TNA)
• Visit the HR-Guide website for further information relating to TNAs' Needs Analysis: How to Determine Training needs - Examples of learning styles.

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Summary

In this topic, you have learnt:

• about collecting performance information from relevant sources
• how to identify the team's needs to meet the organisation's requirements
• how to ensure learning delivery methods are appropriate to the participants.