You and several classmates have formed a human resource consulting company. You have recently been hired to provide training to the sales force for an automobile dealership. As part of your preparation for this consulting engagement, you and your team members must determine how best to approach the automobile dealership to engage the interest of the decision makers. Your part of this assignment is to propose the types of needs assessment tools that could be used to determine how to design and develop the automobile dealership's training programs. These assessment tools could include software, models, or analysis methods. Once you complete your needs assessment, you must now meet with the owner of the dealership to discuss the needs assessment.
From the perspective of a team member, write a 3-4 page needs assessment process in which you do the following:
- Develop an outline that details the process your team will use to conduct a needs assessment for the clients training program, support your decisions with academic resources.
a. Review Chapter 4 on needs assessments. It discusses different types of assessments. Select the best one(s) to use to gather information. Keep in mind that you are trying to find out the organizations needs related to their sale force. Hence, you need to outline the method you are going to use to gather information and make a recommendation to management on what type of training may be required. Use this information in conjunction with your research from the Week 3 discussion. - Identify two possible constraints to your needs assessment approach, explain how the constraints will be overcome.
a. The text also discusses obstacles to conducting a needs assessment, such as time, cost, leadership buy-in, and employee willingness to participate. The most common are time to conduct a thorough assessment and cost. You should mention the others briefly as supporting information. - Evaluate the feasibility of the needs assessment approach based on what is commonly done in the field, discuss your findings.
a. Feasibility is the likelihood your process would happen in this industry. Is your process a standard practice? - Explain why the needs assessment is critical to the development of the training program you plan to deliver.
a. Your goal here is to answer what can happen if you develop training without understanding the training needs and why it is important to determine the issues