About five minutes away from where I work there is a Whole
Foods (www.wholefoods.com). For those of you who are unfamiliar with
Whole Foods it is a grocery store with natural and organic products. According to their website the stores are run
by Store Team Leaders. The stores are
managed by regional offices. The store
near me falls under the Mid-Atlantic region.
I would get a buy-in from the regional manager first and then I would I
would work with the stakeholders at my local store in order to get their buy-in. I would inform them of the purpose of the
needs assessment. According to Brown
(2002), conducting a needs assessment can be useful in identifying organization
goals, gaps in performance, problems that may not be solved by training and
conditions under which the training will occur.
I would meet with the Store Team Leaders and ask them
several questions. My questions would be
focused on uncovering the current state of performance and the desired state of
performance. During the organizational
phase, I would ask what the business goal is that they are trying to meet. I would also ask what the budgeted amount to
complete the training will be. I would
also ask what facilities will be available to conduct training if it needs to
be done off the floor. During the person
analysis, I would ask who needs to be trained.
I would also ask during what hours are the best to train employee since
the store is open outside of normal business hours. During the task phase, I would ask what skills
are to be trained. Which roles can be
affected most by training and if training on particular skills will vary by
role. For example, I think we may find
that cashiers would need more training on people skills than the stock room
workers.
I would employ techniques of interviews, focus groups and
documentation. I would ask to some of
the records from human resources that include employee performance evaluations
and also information gained during exit interviews. Interviews will allow me to get information from
the perspective of the employees. The
focus groups will give me to opportunities to get the employees into a social
environment and share with them information I received during the interviews to
see how they feel we can change them.
Documentation will provide me with the objective aspect that I may not receive
in working with the employees.
References:
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Brown, J. (2002). Training Needs Assessment: A Must for Developing an Effective Training Program.
