Using Training to Build Capacity for Development | Making Training Work for Organizational Needs: Targeting Training

Making Training Work for Organizational Needs: Targeting Training

Diagnosis of Capacity Needs
One of the primary reasons why learning often fails to contribute to sustainable organizational capacity is that training content may not be targeted to organizational needs and goals. Training is most effective when it addresses the specific needs and circumstances of target organizations. In order to ensure that training is well-targeted, training content should be designed on the basis of a diagnosis of organizational capacity gaps and an assessment of the specific training content that is needed to address these gaps. Training objectives must then reflect the workplace performance and organizational goals of training, rather than just the learning goals. And training participants must be correctly selected to ensure that training leads to organizational change.

Good diagnosis of capacity needs should be the first step in design of training and other capacity building interventions. Diagnostic exercises should:

Identify the human, institutional and organizational capacity gaps that must be addressed to achieve development objectives.
Consider what means are most appropriate for addressing these gaps. Training is not always the best means, even where to goal is enhancing human capacity.
Determine whether there are critical contextual conditions, such as incentive or resource constraints, that are likely to block implementation of learning.

Training-Needs Assessment
Once the organizational needs are clear, a training-needs assessment (TNA) is used to determine the content and design of training. A TNA is an essential step because it assesses the present capacities of training participants and ask what skills, knowledge and attitudes they need to acquire in order to achieve organizational goals.

Training content that is not based on adequate capacity diagnosis and needs assessment is far less likely to address specific organizational needs and, thus, to improve organizational capacity. (See Presentation: Needs Assessment: Collecting information, making decisions, and accomplishing results)

Setting Training Objectives
Well-defined training objectives should be based on needs assessment and should specify the knowledge, attitudes and skills to be acquired through training as well as how these are expected to influence workplace behavior after the course. Clear, measurable objectives are fundamental not only to the design of training but to evaluation of training results.
It is important to define what specific performance change is to be achieved through training in order to be able to measure whether it has been achieved.

The Three Levels of Capacity

Enhancing capacity often requires more than just training. Building sustainable capacity to achieve development objectives often requires action on three levels:

Human capacity: the skills and knowledge of individuals working in an organization

Organizational capacity: the equipment and finances an organization has at its disposal

Institutional capacity:the formal and informal incentive structures, rules and norms internal to the organization and in its external environment.

When Not to Train

Training is not always the best way to address human capacity gaps. Other types of capacity-building interventions may be more appropriate when:

Solving a problem requires applying a technique, rather than building knowledge or skills

Only a few individuals require the specified knowledge and skills

Tasks are easy to learn

Learners have a strong background in the topic , so can acquire new knowledge and skills on their own

Learners are unused to or uncomfortable in classroom environments.

Doing Needs Assessment Through the Internet

Courses held that the International Training Centre of the International Labor Organization (ITCILO) are sometimes preceded by a distance-learning component. Participants who will be attending the course at the ITCILO in Turin first participate in online course sessions where they are able to share information about their country context, their training needs and the needs and goals of their organizations. This distance learning phase ensures that all participants in the Turin course have a shared level of knowledge and enables course organizers to better adapt training content to the specific needs and circumstances of participants.

See Also :

Chapter 3. What Training Works: Training Design

Presentation: Needs Assessment: Collecting information, making decisions, and accomplishing results