Planning for a Needs Assessment

The company I chose to explore for this exercise is Men’s Warehouse. Men’s Warehouse is a franchise that caters to those who are seeking to purchase men’s clothing for everyday and special occasions. Not only do they offer the clothing but they also offer to their customers their expertise in finding the right style, fit, and knowledge on other related areas such as how to care for and travel with clothing. With a company like this that is based around something that can be so versatile, if training were to take place a needs assessment to determine their training needs and properly design/prepare for it.

The stakeholders for this needs assessment would be a select group of employees from all of the different organizational areas of the company. Some of those areas would be; General Men’s Wear, the Big & Tall area, Tuxedo Rental, Style Advice, customers/customer support, training and marketing. It would be ideal for each to include a rep(s) from upper-management, middle-management, job incumbent level, and training and customers of Men’s Warehouse’s target market.


Below are the questions proposed to be asked during the Analysis Phase

ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
Upper-Level Management
· What problems are threats to you all reaching your business objectives makes you believe there is a need for training?

Middle-Level Management
· Are there sufficient resources to devote to training?
· Are there any work environmental features that may interfere with the training process?

Incumbent-Level Employees
· Are there any work environmental features that may interfere with the training process?

Trainers
· Do you have the resources and support to carry out any identified training needs?


PERSON ANALYSIS
Upper-Level Management
· Do you feel the organization is doing all it can to reach its target market? If not, which areas of the organization do you think needs training in order to do so?

Middle-Level Management
· The “Style Advice”, “Tuxedo Rental”, and “Big & Tall” sections are key in helping customers shop as they pick out the best items for their size and occasion and learn how to take care of their merchandise. Do you see a lack of expertise within these areas among your employees that would suggest the need for training?

Trainers
· Do you know how to identify which employees need training?

TASK ANALYSIS
Upper-Level Management
· Does Men’s Warehouse have employees with the drive, skills, and competencies to
compete in the fashion market place?

Middle-Level Management
· What can other areas do differently to make your job better/easier?
· What can your area do differently to help make the jobs of other areas better/easier?

Customers
· How helpful has the information/service provided by the Big & Tall, Style Advice, Tuxedo
Rental, and Ask George sections as well as the option to shop by occasion or brand has
been with your deciding on the right item to buy for your size and/or special occasion?

Trainers
· What past training methods have been successes for you?


Below are the different documents/records that would be requested to be seen to get better results from the needs assessment.
· Samples of questions and comments submitted to “Ask George”
· Customer satisfaction survey results from the different special shops
· Current training material
· Evaluation of past training sessions


Below are the techniques that would be used to employ the needs assessment.
· Questionnaires/Surveys – to reach and get information from the large customer base
· Interviews – can be used to gain very detailed information that can be a key factor in
determining training needs.
· Observations – in this environment where a great deal of action is taking place in a clothing
store, having onsite observations of job processes would be a great way to generate data true
to the work environment.
· Focus Groups - focus groups would be used to get info on how the different areas of the
organization can improve processes in which they have to rely on each other to complete and
reach ideal performance levels.


The first step in a successful training effort is to determine that a training need exits through the needs assessment process (Noe, 2010). Therefore, the analysis phase is very important in designing a training program. Without the true reasons behind the purpose of training, going through with it would be pretty close to pointless. The analysis phase is there to research the organization’s employees and processes in order to find reasons for training and how to go about designing it so that it’s beneficial to its purpose.


References
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Men’s Warehouse. Website retrieved July 6, 2011 from http://www.menswarehouse.com/