Needs Assessment

By conducting a needs assessment, the Your Clear Next Step team can gather direct feedback from individuals at your company to identify, prioritize, and make a recommended solution for your training and development needs.

The assessment will include Your Clear Next Step facilitator Sinikka Waugh on site to conduct a series of interviews and discussions. The assessment will also include a review of existing documentation and a recommendation of next steps. The output of the assessment includes summary of findings and a recommendation of next steps. The assessment will result in a high-level plan for different levels of the organization and a prioritized list of key themes.

The Benefits of a Needs Assessment

Regardless of your ongoing training and development solutions, conducting a needs assessment will provide the following benefits:

• Build engagement and buy-in for future trainings
  • When participants feel they are involved with the development of training programs, they are more likely to participate fully in the training itself when it is offered.
• Candor
  • Bringing in an external facilitator for the needs assessment in one-on-one or small group conversations allows your team to be more candid than they might be with their leaders or with internal HR professionals.
• A concrete deliverable
  • The assessment leaves you with a concrete artifact of your organization’s journey: a point-in-time snapshot of the developmental needs of your organization.
• Immediate take-aways
  • Our assessments also include recommendations and take-aways you can put into place immediately on your own, without the support of additional input from us or other training providers.

Should you choose to leverage Your Clear Next Step for training solutions in the future, the needs assessment will also provide the following additional benefits:

• Cost savings
  • Many training programs begin with a skills assessment for that particular skill or development area. An organization-wide assessment can generally shorten, and therefore reduce the cost of curriculum-based assessments we do later.
• A behind the scenes understanding
  • Trainer and facilitator Sinikka Waugh gets a behind-the-scenes understanding of the organizational culture and your team. Familiarity with your organization will help us deliver content that exactly meets your needs, rather than leveraging un-tailored off-the-shelf solutions which may only hit 80%.
• The right trainer
  • We have multiple trainers, and each trainer has their own style and approach. The better we understand you and your team, the better we can match the right trainer(s) to your needs.

How a needs assessment works

The following describes the process of an Assessment.

Before the On-site Assessment: Your team arranges a location and a list of interviewees for the scheduled assessment window.  The Your Clear Next Step team reviews any documentation that is provided in advance and prepares for the on-site interviews. Your Clear Next Step team and your team coordinate and distribute an electronic survey.

During the On-site Assessment: Your Clear Next Step facilitator arrives on site, spends a scheduled amount of time in the office, meeting with key individuals, touring the facility if appropriate, and asking clarifying questions where necessary.

After the On-site Assessment: Your Clear Next Step facilitator completes the analysis from the information gathered during the document review, survey, and on-site assessment and provides a written summary of findings, which includes recommendations for next steps.  Your Clear Next Step facilitator can present the findings to you in an in-person or virtual meeting.