The NEEDS ASSESSMENT Process

INDEX:

• 1. Research the Research Literature on the Needs of Employees
• 2. Set Goals for the Needs Assessment
• 3. Design a needs assessment to allow comparisons
• 4. Design the needs assessment using a model of staff development
• 5. Design the needs assessment to distinguish among the needs of people with differing experience levels
• 6. Use the needs assessment to collect data across time
• 7. Assess the needs of your organization too

1. Research the literature on the needs of novices or other employees who will be mentored.

To get you started, try these two.

• Veenman, Simon. (1984), unsupported beginning employees
• Odell, Sandra. (1986), beginning employees who were mentored and oriented.

They are both "meta analyses" which means the researcher collected a large number of studies on the topic, compared the findings across the studies, and reached some generalized conclusions based on the patterns found prevalent across all the studies. In Veeneman's case he reviewed 83 research studies of organizations in which no support programs or mentoring were provided the novice employees. This is a very powerful method as it tends to "average out" unusual, or atypical findings which will not occur in most circumstances.

Keep in mind that such research findings are bound by a number of sometimes hidden details, such as the dates of the studies (what's changed since then?) and the kinds of programs included in the studies reviewed. Such factors have to be considered when interpreting the findings of the analysis and using them to guide your own decisions.

A NOTE: As significant as such research is, it may be useful in gaining initial support for starting a mentoring program, but it is unlikely to be support that will last more than 2-3 years. That's why you will also need your own local needs assessment.

** For additional guidance for this process, go back to the Mentor Program Leadership Processes web page and look for this topic.

You don't want just to assess what people perceive they need at some point in time. That would allow you to plan for their learning and to know what they are ready to learn, BUT it weill not tell you a whole lot of other things you need to know. For example, it's critical from a planning perspective to know if their perceptions change, eith over time or as a result of a program experience you have provided.

There are a number of other questions your program will need to answer which will reauire you to make comparisons of data from different sources, different times, etc. You need to be able to make comparisons of factors like:

• What new employees already know and can do versus what the know and can do after a training or other development process
• What they think they need versus what the general research on needs suggests they may need.
• What proteges perceive they need versus what their mentors and their supervisors perceive proteges need

The way to approach this issue most effectively is to think into the future about the kinds of questions your program needs to know how to answer, or WILL need to know how to answer at some future point. Then work backwards to plan when and how and from whom to collect the data that will best position your program to determine the answers from an informed basis.

Pilot programs are an excellent strategy for implementing a program plan and collecting comparison data to assess the program's impact and effectiveness. Pilots are so valuable because they create two groups of people, those with and those without the improvements or innovations you wish to test in the pilot.

In fact, this is so critical that this author states it is better not to make any major changes in use of time, money, or other scarce resources UNLESS you have the relevant comparison data to be sure that such changes are very likely to result in the desired improvements. Without such data, you may be able to cause valuable improvements in performance and results, but you may not be able to sustain those improvements without such data because you may not be able to know WHY the improvements happened in the first place.

** For additional guidance for this process, go back to the Mentor Program Leadership Processes web page and look for this topic.

4. Design the needs assessment using a model of staff development

It's amazing, but the vast majority of programs with which this author works would describe their programs as staff development initiatives, but they do not utilize a research-based, proven MODEL of staff development to guide their planning, implementation, evaluation, and decision making. Instead, leaders rely on their own knowledge of staff development and common sense and experience. This is a huge flaw and often is a waste of resources, time , and effort. If your program's goals include development of people, build on the successes of others who have leaned what causes such growth and how to facilitate it. Don't "reinvent the wheel!"

This author's personal recommendation for such a model of staff development is the "Stages of Concern" portion of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM)*. Design the needs assessment so there are at least 3 items targeted at each stage of the ìCBAM Stages of Concernî model. This will allow you to collect data about whatever content you wish to know, AND to place the response and the person responding at a specific stage of development for that topic.

Knowing the stage of concern for a topic allows highly effective planning for providing training or mentoring for that person because you can specifically design your response for the learner, and consider their prior knowledge as well as readiness for the next level. Further, it allows you to shift HOW you interven to facilitate the learning by clarifying the intervention strategy that best meets the needs of that learner for that tpoic at that specific time.

The author guarantees that, if you use this advice consistently in your planning for training AND teach mentors how to use it as well, that your mentoring program trainings will be powerful, gratefully received, and the resulting mentoring will be highly effective. The CBAM "Stages of Concern" is the most effective model for staff development planning this author knows. He uses it to design every thing he does that should result in human learning and improvement because it WORKS!

* Access info on this model in a very good book on the CBAM which is available from http://www.ascd.org - "Taking Charge of Change", by Shirley Hord, Gene Hall, and others, and published by ASCD.

5. Design the needs assessment to distinguish among the needs of people with differing experience levels.

Do not treat all persons the same. For more info on this, see Treat Individuals Individually.

Your needs assessment process needs to be designed to capture the extent of prior knowledge and skills that allow you to plan different work, training, mentoring supervison, and other forms of support for professional growth for each learner. Whether your business is K-12 education in which you want those proteges to become teachers who address student's individual needs, OR you're mentoring employees in a customer service call center and want the proteges thinking about addressing each individual customer's needs, you MUST address THEIR individual needs first. The effectiveness of their experience as learners is a direct and critical prerequisite to their effectiveness as employees.

Therefore, design your needs assessment to assess the differing needs of your younger and more mature, AND more or less experienced:

• Beginning employees
• New employees with prior experience in the same job
• New employees moving from a different career
• Junior or less experienced managers who are indentified for mentoring for leadership development
• Everyone who will receive some form of mentoring and support for professional growth.

Do so by:

1. Reframing the content of your questions considering that respondants will be people of many levels of experience. Usually this means changing your language to be less exclusive to become more general and inclusive of everyone.

2. Embedding hidden or subtle codes or markings that will allow you to know the experience level of respondants. An example of this is to use the same instrument for assessment, but underline the title for those with less than a year of experience, capitalize all letters in the title for those with more than 5 years experience in a role, and use normal caps and no undrline with those who have 1-5 years experience.

The point is to be sure that you can separate and compare the data from different groups of people to determine HOW they are different, and how best to support their professional development.

** For additional guidance for this process, go back to the Mentor Program Leadership Processes web page and look for this topic.

6. Use the needs assessment to collect data across time and reveal how perceptions of needs change as employees gain professional experience and maturity. This is crucial as it will help you design trainings and other forms of support during the years of your program. I suggest that during the first year at least, that you assess the proteges' perceptions of need four times:

• Immediately on hiring, before any training or orientation has occured. If the protege-to-be is an existing employee, do the first needs assessment as soon as the person is identified for mentoring support. The point is to establish baseline needs perceptions before mentoring might cause a change, so that comparison can be made later and it can be shown what effects mentoring has caused.
• Within the first 3-4 week of being on the job. The idea is to show what changes in perception of needs have occurred because of the realities of being in the job for a few weeks. Reality is a great teacher, so expect needs to have changed.
• About 3 months after beginning the job. The idea for this timing is to see what the proteges perceive their needs to be after working for a while, learning the "ropes", and getting past the initial challenges of learning the job and orientation to the local issues and procedures.
• About 10-12 months after starting . By this point, proteges know their way around, the expectations for their work, the local culture, their colleagues and supervisors. Perceptions of needs should be changing again. The assessment at this point will help your program know the proteges' awareness of continuing professional growth needs, or if they feel they are done learning. This is important "readiness" data and it also clarifies awareness of need to be a continual learner and always improving one's own performance and the performance of their team.

** For additional guidance for this process, go back to the Mentor Program Leadership Processes web page and look for this topic.

7. Assess the needs of your organization TOO.

Mentoring programs which do needs assessments, typically address the needs of proteges, or perhaps even the mentors. That IS a critical place to START. However, experience has shown that the mentoring program must be perceived as ìWorth itî by decision makers in the organization if it to be sustainable.

That means that your needs assessment must also address valued organizational needs such as:

• Increased RETENTION of new employees and the associate cost savings
  
  
• Bringing new employees ìup to speedî with veteran employees regarding KNOWLEDGE OF and COMMITMENT to organizational mission, initiatives, and expectations
  
  
• Accelerated ìLEARNING curvesî for new employees
  
  
• Improved job PERFORMANCE of both the proteges and their mentors
  
  
• Increased PRODUCTIVITY and ìbottom lineî RESULTS for which the organization is accountable.

Assessing these "needs" will likely be a research and discussion process focused on collecting data that already exists, such as in a personnel or HR office, as well as development of ways to assess NEW indicators. Assessing these organizational needs may become a considerable task taking extensive time the FIRST time, but over time the task will become much simpler and faster, and the value of these data will become immeasurable for your program's success. This is so because the organizational needs are probably much more important to decision makers than is the development of persons. A sad but true reality, so don't ignore it.

** For additional guidance for this process, go back to the Mentor Program Leadership Processes web page and look for this topic.

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