Assignment Instructions
Instructions:
Read the material at the sites listed in the Week 2 Lessons folder to help guide you in understanding needs with relation to your management problem. Complete a Needs Assessment by submitting a2-4 page paper discussing the client's needs with relation to the management problem you are studying.
Submission Instructions:
Some questions you can explore to help you are:
- What is the problem?
- How is the desired performance related to the current performance?
- How does the desired performance relate to the mission statement?
- Is the problem organization-wide or isolated to one or a few individuals?
- Have organizational initiatives created the problem?
- Does the problem relate to individual performance issues?
- Is training adequate to support the desired outcome?
- Is the issue related to job design?
- What criteria are used to measure performance?
- Is performance criteria appropriate, i.e. attainable and measurable?
This list is not all inclusive and is a guide to support you when completing a Needs Assessment. They are provided to help you get started and inspire questions to explore.
· Welcome to Week 2 Welcome to Week Two! Now that you have completed identifying the problem for your client, it is time to conduct a needs assessment. A Needs Assessment is a great way for leaders to identify and select the right solutions and allocate appropriate resources. A Needs Assessment can be direct or indirect. A direct Needs Assessment is completed through formal research and requires more extensive data collection. An indirect Needs Assessment is completed through non-formal collection. Now that we have identified the problem, we are ready to talk about conducting a Needs Assessment. At the conclusion of this week, you should be able to: · Conduct a Needs Assessment. · Analyze the external and internal environmental forces affecting business organizations and social, political, economic, legal, and strategic issues associated with these competitive forces and environmental factors which impact the effectiveness of managers in today’s competitive and globally-growing organizations. · READING AND RESOURCES · · Needs Assessment-What is it and why do we do it? https://www.ies.ncsu.edu/blog/how-to-conduct-needs-assessment-part-1-what-is-it-and-why-do-it/ · Needs Assessment: (PDF is also located in Resource File ) · Training/Professional Needs Assessment: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/how-to-guides/pages/conduct-training-needs-assessment.aspx · Employee Training Needs Assessment: https://youtu.be/CLr0Z8v4qOc · http://nwlink.com/~donclark/analysis/analysis.html · http://nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat2.html#analysis · http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rouda/T2_NA.html Electronic Materials are provided under licensing or in keeping with Fair Use exemptions for your educational use only. You may quote and utilize this material for this, other APUS courses, and related scholarly pursuits. Unless the materials are in the Public Domain or specific written arrangements are made with the Copyright holders, you may not sell, share or otherwise distribute these documents for personal or other use without the likelihood of violating Copyright Law. · LESSON · When conducting a Needs Assessment you first identify the “what is” relating to the problem you have chosen to address and contrast that to “what should be.” First ask yourself “what do I already know about the needs of the organization.” Second, you will need to gather data and analyze. You can do this by collecting information through interviews, surveys, observing the team dynamics and social interactions. It is also important to review the organization’s documents that can provide you with additional information such as: the mission and values statement, standard operating procedures, training and the culture of the organization. Next you will analyze and prioritize the information and compare with the needs of the organization. In the example from Week 1, the manager has eight productive employees and two employees with productivity problems who, in turn, create an overall productivity problem for the department. This week we want to look at what should be. Using our example, the answer would be that all ten employees need to be performing at an acceptable productivity level so the department is performing at an acceptable productivity level. You are not identifying HOW to solve the problem during this phase...only asking yourself where you are and where you need to be. Some questions you can explore to help you are: · What is the problem? · How is the desired performance related to the current performance? · How does the desired performance relate to the mission statement? · Is the problem organization-wide or isolated to one or a few individuals? · Have organizational initiatives created the problem? · Does the problem relate to individual performance issues? · Is training adequate to support the desired outcome? · Is the issue related to job design? · What criteria are used to measure performance? · Is performance criteria appropriate, i.e. attainable and measurable? This list is not all inclusive and is a guide to support you when completing a Needs Assessment. They are provided to help you get started and inspire your own questions to explore.