Abstract
Organizations use a needs assessment in order to correlate the organization’s goals with the organization’s needs while focusing on the employees’ current skills and the gap between the employees’ skills and the organization’s objectives. Methods of the data collection, the aspects of the data analysis, preliminary recommendations, and possible barriers to the intervention implementation are discussed in detail in the paper.
Needs Assessment and Preliminary Recommendations
In health care organizations, the question of diversity is actively discussed because the level of workforce diversity is rather high. However, there can be problems associated with promoting diversity principles in health care facilities because of a lack of effective training and development programs. Thus, such organizations as health care facilities need effective solutions to their diversity question with references to improving the approaches to the employees’ learning and development.
A needs assessment is necessary to state whether the proposed training program is effective in addressing the diversity question in the organization. It is important to focus on the methods of the data collection, on the data analysis, on developing preliminary recommendations for using the training, and determining possible barriers associated with the implementation process.
Data Collection for Needs Assessment
A needs assessment is the first stage of developing the training program, which is associated with identifying the organization’s goal and the gap between the employees’ skills and knowledge and the organization’s objectives. To gather the data necessary for analyzing the needs, it is necessary to use a variety of methods and techniques (Elkeles & Phillips, 2007, p. 90). In order to assess the employees’ skills in respecting and promoting diversity in the workplace, it is necessary to use questionnaires that provide the qualitative information and structured tests that provide the quantitative information on the employees’ needs.
The Analysis of the Needs Assessment Data
Having conducted a needs assessment, it is necessary to analyze the collected data according to its type. Thus, quantitative and qualitative data are analyzed separately. While discussing questionnaires and the presented qualitative data, it is necessary to focus on the skills, successes, challenges, and barriers mentioned by employees in their answers. Such personal information as the employees’ visions of teamwork, individual work, diversity, job satisfaction, and motivation is important to determine the content of the training program (Pless & Maak, 2004, p. 129). The quantitative needs assessment results should be categorized in a table or chart, and they present the areas for improvement and training referring to numbers and percents.
Preliminary Recommendations
Referring to the analyzed needs assessment data, it is possible to note that the employees of the health care facility need to receive more training on using the advantages of diversity in their workplace. As a result, the best learning initiative for this organization is the on-the-job training program oriented to educating managers and employees in the sphere of promoting diversity in the workplace.
The first recommendation to follow while planning the training program is the focus on hiring the outside specialist in the sphere of diversity training in order to organize the coaching sessions for managers and employees (Frigo, 2008, p. 25). The second recommendation is the focus on using the system of seminars and workshops conducted by the organization’s HR specialists in order to address the learners’ different needs and interests, to apply the training to the organization’s activities, and to promote the principles of respecting diversity.
Barriers in Securing Approval for Intervention
The on-the-job training program which needs hiring outside specialists and trainers is an expensive intervention that requires the revision of the organization’s budget. From this point, possible barriers in securing approval for the stated recommendation are the focus of the management team on the budget limits and the necessity to pay much attention to the ROI calculation in order to predict benefits for the organization (Antariksa, 2007; Deiser, 2009, p. 58). The determined barriers can be overcome with the focus on the accurate calculation of the expected benefits associated with the training’s implementation.
Barriers in Implementing Intervention
Implementing the intervention, it is also possible to observe such barriers as the problems with equipping the facilities, scheduling the program activities, combining the regular job activities with the on-the-job training, and administration. In order to overcome the identified barriers, it is necessary to plan the implementation of the program effectively, with the focus on the details associated with the budget and other material issues (Ellinger, Ellinger, Yang, & Howton, 2002, p. 5). Much attention should be paid to predicting changes in the budget associated with the organization’s regular activities.
Conclusion
In order to respond to the organization’s goal and to contribute to making the company an effective learning organization, it is necessary to implement effective training programs that address the organization’s needs. A needs assessment as the analysis of the organization’s specific needs can be effectively used to identify the areas for improvement. Training programs oriented to promoting diversity are effective at health care facilities. To implement the program successfully, much attention should be paid to the data collection stage of the needs assessment, to the proper analysis of the received data, and to predicting possible barriers in the implementation process.
References
Antariksa, Y. (2007). Measuring ROI of training. Web.
Deiser, R. (2009). Designing the smart organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Elkeles, T., & Phillips, J. (2007). The chief learning officer: Driving value within a changing organization through learning and development. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Ellinger, A. D., Ellinger, A. E., Yang, B., & Howton, S. (2002). The relationship between the learning organization concept and firms’ financial performance: An empirical assessment. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 13(1), 5-22.
Frigo, M. (2008). Return driven: Lessons from high-performance companies. Strategic Finance, 90(1), 25-30.
Pless, N., & Maak, T. (2004). Building an inclusive diversity culture: Principles, processes and practice. Journal of Business Ethics, 54(2), 129-147.