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.
Tyrese,
ReplyDeleteGreat job. I like how you chose to conduct interviews as well as focus groups. This is a great way to keep group members honest, because in a group setting they "may be reluctant to participate if status or position differences exist among members" (Noe, 2010). This should add a great balance to the information that you collect.
Dani
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Hello Tyrese,
ReplyDeleteNavigating through the website, I realized that Whole Foods Market is a huge and well establish organization with around 50,000 employees, even though I have not seen many of their branches around Houston where I used to live. In their website overview, they stated “We know we’ve always been a little out of the ordinary. Those 19 people who started our first store were quite an idealistic bunch! Early on, we adopted a set of 7 core values to guide our purpose” Actually their core values are great and really supporting both their customers, society and their employees.
With such a big organization, I agree with you that you need to get the buy-in from the regional managers first then identify your different shareholders including both store and departments team leaders, store support, different teams members, and the customers.
I also would like to mention that, I very much liked all the questions you’ve introduced, how it is related and how it will help in exploring the training needs for each of the three analysis stages ( organization, task and person) of needs analysis process. The more information we can collect about each phase of the analysis, the best and accurate decision we can make. Noe, 2010, stated “ While any one analysis can indicate the need for training, companies need to consider the information from all there types of analysis before the decision is made to devote time and money for training” Great job, thanks for sharing the ideas.
Reference
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill
Whole Foods Market, (n.d.). WFM Website Overview. Retrieved on March 11, 2012 from http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/values/index.php
Hello Tyrese,
ReplyDeleteI like how your plan takes into consideration where and when the training will take place. As well as the training needs of the various employees depending on their positions. Gathering information from exit interviews will allow you to get true insight from the employees. At that point, they no longer have a need to please and conform. They will be able to share their honest opinions on the work environment.
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Tyrese,
ReplyDeleteYou make a very good point at the beginning regarding the importance of getting buy-in from the Regional manager and the Store Team Leaders. This provides a great opportunity to determine if there is a gap between the current performance and the company’s desired performance of employees. I like the fact that you're using documentation, interviews and focus groups to triangulate and verify the results. I also like that you're involving HR in the analysis; using the employee exit interviews should be vary valuable.
You mentioned using interviews and focus groups of employees, at which phases of the analysis would they be involved; organizational, person and/or task analysis? Do you see any value in surveying or interviewing customers and product/food suppliers during the needs analysis? Should they be considered stakeholders?
Mike