3114.3.1 : Analyzes Strategic Needs Assessment
The learner analyzes training and development needs and solutions to support organizational goals.
An organization’s sustainable competitive advantage is derived largely from intangible assets: human, social, and intellectual capital. Human resource professionals enable current and future organizational competitiveness by ensuring that people with the skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to produce these resources are in adequate supply. This is accomplished through employee training and talent management. As a human resource professional, your ability to effectively plan and implement employee training and develop talent management programs will directly contribute to your organization’s success. In this task, you will develop a needs assessment plan to analyze the organization’s training needs and recommend a training strategy.
Refer to the Scenario and the attached “Floor Agent Job Description” to complete this performance assessment.
A midsized custom furniture retail organization has been in business for 30 years. They started their organization in a small town and have seen their greatest growth over the last five years, moving from a small local business to a furniture store known nationwide. The organization has recently acquired 10 new stores and 300 new employees from a competitor, including 100 floor agents. This acquisition will increase the organization’s competitive advantage in suburban areas where it was not servicing and improve its overall outreach and coverage of both metropolitan and suburban areas. Thus, allowing the organization to provide a more extensive portfolio of customers and potential product offerings.
The acquisition has been announced, and the new stores are scheduled for grand reopenings in 60 days. The custom furniture retail organization is looking to capitalize on the increased product knowledge, sales initiatives, and market knowledge gained from the acquisition by focusing on the training and development of the floor agents. Acquiring floor agents from new stores means that the sales tactics, knowledge, and processes differ from store to store, resulting in various objectives, sales drivers, and measures for success within the sales department. To remain competitive in the furniture store industry and to create synergy between the newly acquired and the current stores, training and development of all floor agents is needed.
As the director of strategic training and development, you need to create a training plan to train and prepare the newly acquired floor agents to meet organization expectations regarding sales initiatives and sales training. As you begin strategizing the training and development plan, you realize that the furniture store does not currently have any established process for training floor agents; thus, you will need to develop the training plan from scratch.
Since the competitor organization has retained a number of their current locations, management at your organization has concerns that the competitor may attempt to entice their best employees back to their organization. Management needs you to identify those promising individuals and design a plan to work specifically with them on their career development within the organization and, when possible, plan their integration into the organization’s management.
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. The similarity report that is provided when you submit your task can be used as a guide.
You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.
Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc., unless specified in the task requirements. All other submissions must be file types that are uploaded and submitted as attachments (e.g., .docx, .pdf, .ppt).
Training Needs Assessment
A. Create a needs assessment plan to analyze the organization’s training needs and recommend a training strategy by doing the following:
1. Explain how you would assess the organization’s training needs for the newly acquired floor agents.
2. Conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of the company’s training needs for the floor agents by doing the following:
a. Identify one strength that is internal to the organization.
i. Explain how the strength affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents.
b. Identify one weakness that is internal to the organization.
i. Explain how the weakness affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents.
c. Identify one current opportunity that is external to the organization.
i. Explain how the opportunity affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents.
d. Identify one current threat that is external to the organization.
i. Explain how the threat affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents.
3. Describe how one learning theory would inform the development of the training program.
a. Identify two strategies from the chosen learning theory for shaping the learning outcomes of the training program.
4. Describe one legal obligation the employer in the scenario has for the training program, according to one of the following laws:
• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990
• Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act 1967
B. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
C. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.
File size limit: 200 MB
File types allowed: doc, docx, rtf, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, odt, pdf, csv, txt, qt, mov, mpg, avi, mp3, wav, mp4, wma, flv, asf, mpeg, wmv, m4v, svg, tif, tiff, jpeg, jpg, gif, png, zip, rar, tar, 7z
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Not Evident The submission does not explain how to assess the organization’s training needs for the newly acquired floor agents. |
Approaching Competence The submission explains how to assess the organization’s training needs for the newly acquired floor agents, but the explanation is not logical. |
Competent The submission logically explains how to assess the organization’s training needs for the newly acquired floor agents. |
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Not Evident The submission does not identify a strength. |
Approaching Competence The submission identifies a strength, but it is not internal to the organization, or it is not accurate. |
Competent The submission accurately identifies a strength that is internal to the organization. |
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Not Evident The submission does not explain how the strength affects training needs and outcomes. |
Approaching Competence The submission explains how the strength affects training needs and outcomes, but the explanation is not specific to floor agents, or it is not logical. |
Competent The submission logically explains how the strength affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents. |
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Not Evident The submission does not identify a weakness. |
Approaching Competence The submission identifies a weakness, but it is not internal to the organization, or it is not accurate. |
Competent The submission accurately identifies a weakness that is internal to the organization. |
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Not Evident The submission does not explain how the weakness affects training needs and outcomes. |
Approaching Competence The submission explains how the weakness affects training needs and outcomes, but the explanation is not specific to floor agents, or it is not logical. |
Competent The submission logically explains how the weakness affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents. |
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Not Evident The submission does not identify an opportunity. |
Approaching Competence The submission identifies an opportunity, but it is not a current opportunity, it is not external to the organization, or it is not accurate. |
Competent The submission accurately identifies a current opportunity that is external to the organization. |
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Not Evident The submission does not explain how the opportunity affects training needs and outcomes. |
Approaching Competence The submission explains how the opportunity affects training needs and outcomes, but the explanation is not specific to floor agents, or it is not logical. |
Competent The submission logically explains how the opportunity affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents. |
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Not Evident The submission does not identify a threat. |
Approaching Competence The submission identifies a threat, but it is not a current threat, it is not external to the organization, or it is not accurate. |
Competent The submission accurately identifies a current threat that is external to the organization. |
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Not Evident The submission does not explain how the threat affects training needs and outcomes. |
Approaching Competence The submission explains how the threat affects training needs and outcomes, but the explanation is not specific to floor agents, or it is not logical. |
Competent The submission logically explains how the threat affects training needs and outcomes for the floor agents. |
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Not Evident The submission does not describe how a learning theory would inform the development of the training program. |
Approaching Competence The submission describes how a learning theory would inform the development of the training program, but the description is not logical. |
Competent The submission logically describes how a learning theory would inform the development of the training program. |
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Not Evident The submission does not identify any strategies for shaping the learning outcomes of the training program. |
Approaching Competence The submission identifies 2 strategies for shaping the learning outcomes of the training program, but 1 or more of the strategies are not accurate or are not relevant to the organization’s training needs. |
Competent The submission accurately identifies 2 strategies for shaping the learning outcomes of the training program that are relevant to the organization’s training needs. |
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Not Evident The submission does not describe 1 legal obligation the employer in the scenario has for the training program according to one of the applicable laws. |
Approaching Competence The submission describes 1 legal obligation the employer in the scenario has for the training program, but the law does not apply to the training program, or the explanation is not logical. |
Competent The submission describes 1 legal obligation the employer in the scenario has for the training program according to one of the applicable laws. |
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Not Evident The submission does not include both in-text citations and a reference list for sources that are quoted, paraphrased, or summarized. |
Approaching Competence The submission includes in-text citations for sources that are quoted, paraphrased, or summarized and a reference list; however, the citations and/or reference list is incomplete or inaccurate. |
Competent The submission includes in-text citations for sources that are properly quoted, paraphrased, or summarized and a reference list that accurately identifies the author, date, title, and source location as available. |
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Not Evident This submission includes professional communication errors related to spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence fluency. For best results, please focus on the specific Correctness errors identified by Grammarly for Education to help guide your revisions. If you need additional assistance preparing your submission, please contact your Instructor. |
Approaching Competence This submission includes professional communication errors related to spelling, grammar, punctuation, and/or sentence fluency. For best results, please focus on the specific Correctness errors identified by Grammarly for Education to help guide your revisions. |
Competent This submission demonstrates correct use of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence fluency. You have demonstrated quality professional communication skills in this submission. |