Providing the Applicable Model of Training Needs Assessment in Organizations

Defining the training needs in organizations is the most important factor in human capital development. The aim of this study was to provide the applicable model of training needs assessment in organizations. The population of the study consisted of 460 employees in some organizations. Simple random sampling was used and the sample size was estimated 210 people using Morgan table. Based on the literature, research, ISO 10015 standard and applicable experience in this area, key indicators of training needs assessment in four dimensions, namely job competencies, organizational objectives, problem solving, and developmental gaps were identified. Using the experts’ opinion, a researcher-made questionnaire consisted of 12 items was developed as the instrument for data collection and the data were analyzed by SPSS. The results of the analysis indicated that all the research objectives were supported. As observed, among the dimensions of model, job competencies and organizational objectives had the highest and the lowest mean, respectively. Also, the findings of the paper indicated how to define the training needs according to this model with practical examples. In addition, defining the training needs according to this model can be used in organizations, industries, and different business to empower the human capitals.


Introduction
Staff training is a process for individuals' compatibility with the changing organizational environment, and consequently the organization's compatibility with the external environment.Without a precise and logical program, this cannot happen.Training planning usually aims at increasing information, knowledge and skills and capabilities of staff, and prepares them to perform their individual specific tasks and accept new and higher responsibilities in the organization.Each program must be provided to meet professional needs and work environment problems of the staff in a perceivable way.So, human resource training and development will lead to staff's deeper insight, higher knowledge, and improved skill for business duties and responsibilities in the organization.As a result, organizational goals will be reached more effectively and efficiently.Today, organizations can hardly ever improve and develop without staff training.
Using international training standards such as ISO10015 can significantly help better application of the training programs.Training needs assessments is undoubtedly vital in any organization or company's training process.Unfortunately, in many organizations training needs assessments is replaced by a survey from the staff.Suppose you are ill and you visit a doctor, what do you think the doctor's most important duty is? Diagnosis or prescribing.Unquestionably, diagnosis is more important than prescribing, since prescribing can be right only if the disease is diagnosed correctly.Training needs assessment is no exception to this rule; first the needs must be diagnosed and then, prescribe the solution for training gap, if the needs are training needs in nature.
This study tries to present a practical model for accurate diagnosing and assessing of training needs in the organization.Also, in this model, four main dimensions through which the training needs can be diagnosed and are in fact the input to training needs assessment process will be studied.The dimensions under the study are job competencies, organizational objectives, problem solving, and developmental gaps.Since the study is operational and based on the researcher's experience in administrative and HRM positions in different organizations and industries, each needs assessment dimension will be presented along with practical examples.Also, introducing this model to market help organizations, industries and different business to identify the gaps, specify the different training needs, and implementing the effective training courses based on gaps.Defining lean training courses is the main important step in training marketing.

The Literature Review
The definition of training is the process of change used to develop specific skills, usually for a job.This means that training refers to a planned intervention by an organization to improve an employee's job-related competencies.The role of training is to enable employees to master the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours that will enable them to improve their performance on the job (Bloisi, 2007).
The needs analysis identifies the specific skills required for performance and productivity includes organization needs analysis, task needs analysis, and individual needs analysis.The needs analysis looks at the organization and identifies reasons that could affect the performance of the organization.The next step is to identify whether training is the most appropriate solution for the organization.This would involve determining the appropriateness of training in relation to the organization's business strategy, the financial and physical resources available, and the support for training from both managers and employees.The individual needs analysis helps to identify the current performance against desired performance and the gaps in ability, skills, and knowledge; following this, it determines whether poor performance is a result of lack of knowledge, skill ability, or a motivational or work design problem; it shows who needs training.
The task analysis includes identifying the elements that make up the task, in terms of the knowledge, skill, and behaviours that need to be emphasized in the training process (Bloisi, 2007).
Training is expensive; therefore, managers need to ensure that they have fully assessed the situation to establish whether training is the answer.Once they have decided on a training strategy, then training policies are the next stage (Bloisi, 2007).
As stated earlier, training is the bridge that fills the gap between where an individual is and where the organization wants them to be.To identify such gaps, Boydell and Leary (2002) suggest that the organization needs to identify three levels of performance, namely implementing, improving, and innovating.
Implementing refers to filling the gap between present and optimal performance; improving states enabling a continual raising of standards; and, innovating involves doing new and better things to enable change and a continuous learning organization (Bloisi, 2007).Competency has been defined differently by different organizational experts.Some of these definitions are as follows: -Competency is defined as any knowledge, skill, ability or personal quality shown by the behavior and leading to service excellence.-Competency is a written essay on personal skills and assessable professional behaviors used to achieve goals.-Competency is the behaviors that are displayed more stably through superior performance compared to those with average performance.-Competency is a combination of motivations, habits, self-concept, attitude or values or notions, cognitive behavioral knowledge or skills and any personal characteristics that are measured reliably and can show the difference between individuals with high and average performance.
Although there are a lot of definitions for competency, generally it is "those characteristics of employees that forms the foundation of their successful professional behaviors".From this perspective, competency has aspects of knowledge, skill, and attitude (Khorasani, &Eidi, 2010).
Knowledge refers to the theoretical knowledge that is usually gained through education in the majors and achieved in academic levels.Developing theoretical knowledge is the infrastructure for development of skills and attitude and does not affect the development of individual competencies that much, alone.
Skill is the "ability to implement science in action".Skill is achieved and developed through repeated application of knowledge in a real environment.Skills development improves the quality of performance.Without it, in many cases, personal information will not lead to much impact.For example, no manager can gain teamwork skills by studying and without applying the principles of teamwork in action and experiencing them.
Attitude is "individual's image of the world and its surroundings".A person's mental image is the framework that explains and shapes their thought and action field.People's understanding of the phenomena around them and their decision on how to act is based on their mental image.The role of attitude that actually forms people's understanding is much more important than knowledge and skills, and the process of creating and changing is also more complex than the process of acquiring knowledge and skills.A variety of features including a person's characteristics acquired throughout life are very effective in shaping the attitude.Attitude comes from two sources, namely genetic transmission (intrinsic) and transmission from the environment throughout life (acquired).
As noted above, knowledge, skills and attitude are three important aspects of competency that interact with each other and enable an individual to perform work tasks well within the constraints within and outside of the organization, in addition to ensuring organizational success (Khorasani, & Eidi, 2010).

The Study
The conceptual model of the study is shown in Figure 1.

Method
The methodology of this study fits within the category of survey-descriptive research.The population of the study was a group of 460 of employees in some organizations.Simple random sampling was used and the sample size was estimated 210 people using Morgan table.Based on the literature, research, ISO 10015 standard and applicable experience in this area, key indicators of training needs assessment in four dimensions, namely job competencies, organizational objectives, problem solving and developmental gaps were identified.
Using the experts' opinion, a researcher-made questionnaire consisted of 12 items was developed as the instrument for data collection and the data were analyzed by SPSS.The reliability of the study was surveyed and calculated the Cronbach's alpha using SPSS software package, yielding 0.84.According to the research objectives, the collected data were analyzed by using SPSS software package.Also, it was explained how to define the training needs according to this model with practical examples.

Descriptive Findings
In this section, the demographics of the variables including gender, education, work experience, age, and position are presented in Table 1.For each item, statistics such as frequency and percentage are analyzed.According to Table 1, 171 individuals in the sample of 210 were males.Only 39 individuals, i.e. 18.6 percent of the sample was comprised of female employees.Following this, 8 individuals held diplomas.The largest segment was employees with bachelor's degrees: 119 or 56.7 percent.Eighty-six individuals i.e. 32.4 percent of the 230 participants held master's degrees while only 15 employees had Ph.D. degree.Forty-two individuals in the sample were senior managers comprising 20 percent of the sample.Middle managers and supervisors constituted19 and 11 percent of the sample, respectively.Experts formed the largest group of the individuals in the sample with 105 participants or 50 percent.Moreover, 72 individuals were as young as 30 years old.However, the majority of the participants were between the ages of 30 to 40.Twenty-six individuals, i.e. 12.4 percent were 40 to 50 years of age.The oldest group was 50 to 60 years old with only 1 individual.Besides, 126 individuals, i.e. 60 percent of the individuals had worked less than 10 years.Seventy-one participants or 33.8 percent of the individuals had up to 20 years of experience and13individuals had for over twenty years of work experience.

Indicator Means
In this section, the indicator means are shown in Table 2.

Variable Means and Cronbach's Alphas
The variable means and Cronbach's Alphas are represented in Table 3.As shown in Table 3, job competencies have a mean of 4.15.The mean for organizational objectives is 3.35.Problem solving has a mean of 4.00 and developmental gaps are 4.09.Also, the Cronbach's alpha of each variable is calculated.

One-Sample T-test
In this test, hypothesis for the mean of the population expressed on a Likert scale of one to five is evaluated.This test is used to determine the level of factors.Since in each dimensions, Sig. is smaller than 0.05, and considering the 0.95 confidence interval, it can be concluded that variables have acceptable means.

Model of Training Needs Assessment
The model of training needs assessment can be summarized in Figure 2.

Training Courses based on Job Competencies
Below are some of the job analysis results derived from the study of mission, vision and goals of the organization, studying the training process and its relationship with other processes, completing the job questionnaires, and interviews with experts.The job analysis results for Director of Training and HRD position is displayed in Table 5. Training courses based on job competencies are shown in Table 6. at an acceptable level.Also, the practical examples of the model showed that assessing the training needs according to four dimensions of model can be applicable and useful for organizations.
According to the results of the study, the proposed model, and practical examples, the following suggestions are offered: it is suggested that organizations review their organizational jobs and through competency-based job analysis, develop job duties and with that in mind, define competencies needed to fulfill job duties in the areas of knowledge, attitude, and skills and finally determine training needs based on these elements.Then, they should determine competency gaps for employees in each position.
Paying attention to the organizational objectives in the areas of core values, policy and strategic objectives are of the utmost importance.The results indicated that in the formulation of training needs, the organization's goals and objectives and developing the needs based on them can be an important input for the training needs assessment, underrated by the organizations.Usually the staff participate in job skills courses.It is obvious that aligning training with organizational goals through defining the training needs of this dimension helps to increase the effectiveness of training and facilitates achieving the goals of the organization.Since usually competency-based job needs are updated annually, using a problem-solving approach focused on the process, technical and human areas can be very effective.This means that some problems may arise during the tasks and it can be determined if the problem is resolved through training.Following this, effectiveness design of training courses can be a fundamental step in training needs determination.
It is recommended that organizations particularly consider the use of developmental gapbased modern training needs assessment approach.In this regard, organizations are required to provide individual development plan (IDP) to their employees.The program can be realized through this dimension of needs assessment.Utilizing a feedback report of competence assessment center, staff performance appraisal and career feedback report can be used as perfectly operational input in the needs assessment process.
In order to determine the development gap-based training needs, organizations need to design competency model cases and through creating assessment centers as a means of empowerment in succession planning, assess the staff.Using the assessing feedback report will greatly help to build developmental training needs.It is recommended for organizations with small dimensions, to use the off the shelf assessment center.
The establishment of performance evaluation system can help staff development.This system's feedback report is effective as input in developing the needs assessment process in staff development programs.Organizations should define career courses and play a leading role in staff development.It is suggested that organizations establish career plans.In the end, it is recommended that researchers conduct some studies with a more in-depth review of the needs assessment model.It seems that other indicators can be added to this model or even another dimension to needs assessment dimensions.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Conceptual model of training needs assessment Research Objectives The main objective of the study is providing a training need assessment model based on practical dimensions.Following this, the secondary objectives of the study involves determining key indicators to assess the training needs in the job competencies; determining key indicators to assess the training needs in the organizational objectives; determining key indicators to assess the training needs in the problem solving; and determining key indicators to assess the training needs in the developmental gaps.

Figure2.
Figure2.Model of training needs assessment

Figure4.
Figure4.Performance appraisal indicatorsThe acceptance level of each indicator in Figure4and Figure6is 80 and 60, respectively.Therefore, defining the training courses for the indicators are less than acceptance level.

Table 1
Variable Statistics

Table 2
Indicator Means

Table 3
Variable Means and Cronbach's Alphas

Table 4
One-Sample T-Test Results for Variable Means

Table 5
Job Analysis ResultsResponsibility for the supervision and control over the implementation process includes needs assessment, planning, training, implementation of effective programs to evaluate the effectiveness of training and staff development programs.Cooperation in the Planning and Realization of Common Strategic Objectives 6 Organizing, Planning, Conducting, Controlling and Human Capital Development of the Unit Under Control 7 Encouraging the Staff Under Supervision to Save Costs 8 Providing Performance Reports of the Staff Under Supervision to Superiors 9 Monitoring the Development of Documentation Required for the Unit in Accordance with Defined Processes 10 Promoting Cooperation and Synergy for the Department Goals with Cooperation of Other Unit Staff Final Report and Analysis of Training Courses Effectiveness Assessment Reports 18 Monitoring and Improving the Training Process using Defined Criteria Succession 20 Preparing and Completing "Career" Forms in order to Determine the Career Path for Key Personnel 21 Preparing a Needs Assessment to Prepare a Person for the Position Other Tasks 22 Library Enrichment (E-Books and Paper Books) and Monitoring its Library System 23 Supervision and Control over Procurement of Training Records for Staff 24 Providing Comprehensive Statistical Training Process Reports and Submitting to Superiors 25 Planning for Training Upon Hire and Providing Proper Training Foundations for Socialization of New Recruits 26 Providing Appropriate Opportunities to Promote Personnel Awareness