HR.com's Thought Leaders for July 19, 2007

DC:  Today we are here to answer your questions. We got a question by E-mail before the event today, so I thought I would start it off with that one, "How do I handle training needs assessment for soft skill training?"

AR:  This is something I've worked on many times in my life and also have written about in "First Things Fast: A Handbook for Performance Analysis" and in "Training Needs Assessment."  The approach to training needs analysis would be no different whether it's technical skills or soft skills. Yes, your sources of information would be different, perhaps some of the questions might be a little bit different, the subject matter experts would be different, the model performers to whom you would look at would be different.  But in terms of what you do in an assessment,
it's really not any different. 

There are three kinds of questions you want to ask.  You want a picture of what greatness looks like from multiple perspectives including the customer who asked for the program, water-walkers (really successful performers), known best practices and published literature. For example, in leadership or communications or customer service there is already a lot of information that gives you a vivid picture of what greatness would look like.

Next, you want to ask, 'Where are they going right and where are they going wrong?'  What is current performance? Have you been getting complaints from customers about customer service?  Are there any problems that you see in the exit interviews comments from people about communication skills of supervisors or managers? You need the details about what is currently going on.

Third, especially in the area of soft skills, you need a picture about what will drive performance. What is currently impeding it and getting in the way? When we in training are involved the assumption is that good performance isn't happening because employees don't know how. But there are other reasons, like the organization doesn't honor the
behaviors or the software doesn't work or you have competing priorities or there is no incentive and so on.

TB: Allison, I echo everything you said absolutely.  I would go about it the same way as I would if I was having to put together technical training. Check to see what your corporate competencies might say about expectations for soft skills. You may have something, even if it's in a vision or mission statement, that says here is the kind of organization that we will be-check there and see what that portends for soft skills.

I have had better success in talking with management and line folks when instead of talking about 'soft skills' I talk about 'business skills' or 'interpersonal skills'; particularly the phrase 'business skills'; line folks understand what that means.

In getting information about what employees are currently doing, try to get some sort of access, (even if it's at a high rolled up level) to what sort of trends are in the annual performance reviews.  What are supervisors saying about folks they supervise as far as skills that are needed? Then in turn find out what sort of feedback employees provide about their leaders.  From that you can get a trend.  At an
organization I was in up until about a year ago, we got quite a bit of feedback from the unions on the types of soft skills our supervisors needed, what was lacking.  That was a good source of data.

DC:  Here is another audience question: What is in the latest technology or practices to keep participants engaged in E-learning?