Training Needs Analysis · TNA
Training Needs Analysis
What is Training Needs Analysis?
- Analyzing the gap between current and target performance
- Isolating what training can solve
- The starting point for training design
Once TNA takes hold, even the way training requests come in changes. The order “Please run a sales training” becomes the question “At which stage, and what percentage, are we losing?” and the HRD manager comes to the table with a list of root causes rather than a course catalog. That is why the real output of TNA is not a training plan but a one-page chart separating what training can fix from what policy or process must fix. With that chart in hand, you can answer “Why this course?” in a single sentence at the budget review.
In practice, a root-cause question sits on top of the three-level analysis. Mager and Pipe framed it as a fork: can’t do it, or won’t? If people have never done the task, training is the answer. If they used to do it and recently stopped, the cause usually lies in tools, incentives, or manager feedback. The evidence to examine also differs by level: for organization analysis, the business plan and KPI trends; for task analysis, shadowing top performers and the job description; for person analysis, appraisal results and interviews. In-depth interviews with just 10–20% of the target group will rule out many early hypotheses. A survey is the last tool for testing a hypothesis, not the starting point, and the work goes much faster if you look at the numbers first and talk to people afterward.
The most common mistake in practice is calling a demand survey a TNA. A checklist that asks “Pick the courses you want next year” measures preferences, not performance gaps. The resulting list favors popular instructors’ courses, while the teams whose results are actually slipping go untouched. Even riskier is covering over a policy or tooling problem with training. When metrics haven’t moved six months later, the training team takes all the blame. So during analysis, put a written record of “training won’t solve this part” on file and get the business unit to agree to it.
Anna ChoExpert in organizational culture, coaching, emotion management, and CS consulting
John KimInstructor John Kim, CEO of Nanum Consulting and author of B2B Marketing DesignThe classic framework is the three-level analysis (organization, task, person) that McGehee & Thayer set out in their 1961 book. This O-T-P model is still the most widely used today.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, a food-ingredient distributor in the Seoul metropolitan area (210 employees, KRW 90 billion (≈ US$67,335,000) in annual revenue), saw its number of new accounts fall for two years in a row. The head of sales asked for proposal-skills training for all 62 sales reps, but the HRD team ran a three-week TNA before getting started.
- The HR development (HRD) team lead dug into the last six months of sales data. Deals moved well up to the first meeting, but after the quote, contract conversion split sharply: 41% for the top group and 12% for the bottom group.
- After shadowing the top 5 and bottom 10 reps for two days each, the lead found the difference wasn’t verbal skill. It was the ability to justify a price with cost data during negotiation. One rep said, “When they ask for a discount, I just ask the division head.”
- In a survey of 62 reps, more than half said they spend six or more hours a week writing quotes. The CRM had no price history, so they dug through Excel files every time. That was a system problem, not a training problem.
- So they dropped the request to train everyone. They designed an 8-hour cost-and-negotiation course for only the 38 reps with the lowest conversion rates, and handed the rest to IT as a project to improve the CRM’s price-history feature.
- Six months later, the quote-to-contract conversion rate had risen from 12% to 27%, and time spent preparing quotes fell from about 6 hours a week to about 2. The head of sales said, 'We trained less, yet performance improved.'