Expert services in teacher mentoring & coaching that target your needs. 

© 2008 by Barry Sweeny

• Why Expertise is Needed in Needs Assessment
• The Needs Assessment Cover Letter
• The Needs Assessment Instrument
• The Post Training Evaluation - Assessing Needs Addressed and Remaining

Needs assessments are a very tricky challenge, one that usually requires expertise to make it functional and worth doing! What you learn is a picture of a group's PERCEIVED needs, not all of what they really need. There are other needs which must be considered, such as:

• The research on employee needs, both generic and local over time
• The supervisor's perceptions of what employees need
• The organization's sense of what is needed, especially as driven by strategic initiatives and the calendar of events
• The trainer's own sense of what participants need, hopefully based on data such as collected by a need assessment process.

Also, needs assessments can set up inappropriate expectations, such as that the data will be the ONLY source of input used to shape the program or that what is stated as a need will be met.

If a needs assessment process is used, in the end, the consultant/trainer may have a better set of data on needs than all other stakeholders. That adds one other level of "trickiness" to this critical task - how to help all stakeholders learn to used data, not just opinions, to plan and evaluate programs. If that can happen, the process will lead to:

• More effective trainings initially
• More effective trainings over time as data are used to refine the trainings
• Increased employee learning, growth and performance
• Data which demonstrate program impact and value of the training program
• A program that is easier to support and sustain over time
• More effective, data-based decision making by stakeholders in other settings or processes

The following was the suggested cover letter I sent my client to be adapted for use on her own letter head. I provided this, in part, to make her life easier and to be sure that certain critical language was used and other potentially negative language might not be used.

Date: January 15, 2002 From: Roxanne K_________, Staff Development, SPEED District 802 To: All mentors and proteges Re: Mentor Training Needs Assessment Hello!  As you all know, we have planned a mentor training for all mentors and their proteges, February 5, 2002, from 3:30 to 5:30 PM, at the _______. We are very pleased to have engaged Barry Sweeny, an internationally known mentoring, coaching, and induction consultant, trainer and author to lead that event. Mr. Sweeny has requested that we ask you to provide some data which he will use to plan the training and ensure that it addresses the highest priority areas of interest. To do so he has provided us with a needs assessment which we have enclosed. We ask that you complete this as soon as possible, as Mr. SweenyÕs travel schedule leaves only a very small ÒwindowÓ of time in which to tally these results and to prepare before the training. Mr. Sweeny has also asked us to inform you that he is the only person who will review individual responses to this assessment. He considers this critical, as he wants to ensure that you feel completely free to be frank and candid in your responses. He is interested in knowing if there are concerns, as that is exactly what his time with us is designed to address. I and my office staff also want to ensure that the data collected in this assessment are an accurate representation of your true feelings. Therefore, we will collect the responses you return, but we promise to respect the privacy of this process. Also, we will only see Mr. SweenyÕs final chart which will tally the totals and which will not mention any individuals by name. We are excited about this opportunity we have created to better support your work together in mentoring. We are confident that you too will be pleased at the conclusion of this event. Please return your completed response to _______ , so that we receive it no later than January___, 2002 at X:XX oÕclock. Thanks very much for your thoughtful consideration of this assessment. We appreciate the time you will give to completing it, and the professionalism you show in your commitment to our profession.

The Needs Assessment Instrument

Although it may not be evident here, this is a very sophisticated assessment, allowing a number of goals to be served. Click here to see those goals. The sophistication arises especially in the specific items and the multiple column response structure.

1. Circle the number in column 1 which best indicates your current knowledge or skill level for each item.
2. Circle the number in column 2 which best indicates your desire to learn more about each item now.
3. Circle the number in column 3 which best indicates your interest in learning about the topic in the future.

A score of 1 indicates you have a low interest and a score of 5 is high interest.

The Training Evaluation - Assessing Needs Addressed and Remaining

Sweeny Note: The data assembled from the instrument (perceived needs) were combined with other needs (perceptions) and used to guide design of the training. Those data are not presented here. However, the priorities that were identified in those data are the topics which were addressed and are the topics used in this end-of-training evaluation.

The goals of this end-of-training evaluation were:

• Data for the trainer, to identify areas for improvement of the training
• To demonstrate to the client the extent of participant learning and growth (not application however)
• To guide management decisions about follow up support to the training to increase implementation
• To consolidate in the minds of participants, the extent to which they really did learn and grow, and to help them realize the value of the training they had just experienced. This leads to better evaluation scores for the consultant, increased client satisfaction, and better opportunities to continue working with the client.