Allison Rossett, San Diego State University
Setting: Early Monday morning, a meeting room in a large corporation. Four "training" professionals and the Director of Human Resources are gathered in a meeting with an external consultant who is there to talk with them about needs assessment.
Andy, the Director: I've invited Dr. Dee Cider because I'm concerned that we're not doing careful study prior to investing scarce training resources. And sometimes, when we do build training programs, we're using them in infertile, even hostile, environm ents. Remember that time management class! And the numerical control lathe course was scoffed at by supervisors after we rolled it out.
Dee, the Consultant: From what Andy told me beforehand, I'm presuming that you didn't invite me to teach you needs assessment, but rather to focus on what gets in your way, why it's so hard to do, why it's so hard to use the data in the organization....
Vicky: I do needs assessments. Always. I learned a three step model at East Sacajawea State and I follow it religiously. Maybe Andy isn't familiar with my projects?
Deron: Vicky is lucky. In the management development area, sure you can do them. But I'm in IT training. We have no time at all. We're constantly rolling out new hardware and software and we've got to have training and documentation. No time. How yo u gonna do needs assessments in that situation?
Dee: Perry, how about you? Or Amanda, what about your work in the global financial community? Think about a recent project and how you scoped it.
Perry: I came up from the field just two years ago, right out of the sales community so I already know what they need. Sure, if you're just out of school, then you gotta do interviews or whatever, but that's not my problem.
Amanda: Oh, my turn. Not sure what to say about it.
Dee: Is there discussion of needs assessments or study prior to action around here, Amanda?
Amanda: Dee, truth is, I don't think needs assessments are really a priority around here...
Vicky: She's right. Nobody ever says anything about them and sometimes the customers would rather we didn't because it could highlight some inconsistencies in their worlds and they would rather toss their people to us to "fix."
Amanda: Last year the bonuses were based on how much business we brought in, how many hours we were billable (ever try to be billable for needs assessments?), and shifting classes to the Intranet. So how real is this needs assessment thing anyway? Andy, what do you think about that? Andy, where's Andy?
Dee: (addressed to the four professionals and their director and to our readers) Amanda, Andy slipped me this note. He got paged on an emergency and had to slip out. You raise a good question. So how real is this needs assessment thing anyway?