'Word your requirements precisely and ensure that you cover all categories of human-related requirements.' That is one of the underlying principles of needs analysis. A needs analysis helps define what any system should look like, before it gets to the design stage. In other words, if you don't know what you need, you might end up getting the wrong thing.

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How to get the right thing

If you are ever in the situation of having to find "some training" for your team, department or company, start with a simple training needs analysis, which won't take very long. It is important that you can clearly outline who should receive training and why. It means you will know what to ask for when you are ready to talk to a potential provider. A training provider who knows what they're doing will have lot of experience with training program design and they will design the system for you/with you. The more insight you can give from the very start, the more effectively your training program (your system) can be designed and implemented.

People commonly start by thinking about the sort of training they want. Effective training must have realistic objectives for everyone involved. If you are familiar with our blog and online publications, you'll have come across this sentence "Start with the end in mind." Here are some questions to get you started:

• What result(s) do we want to see?
• What behaviour needs to change so that this result can be achieved?
• What skills, knowledge or attitudes do people need to learn to change this behaviour?
• What sort of training is most appropriate for learning these skills, knowledge or attitudes?

A good training provider should be able to help you to define the behaviours that support your objectives. They should be able to help you to decide what skills, knowledge and attitudes affect these behaviours. And, finally, they can suggest alternative ways for delivering training which will ensure that your people learn and can transfer the training to the workplace.

Finding the right trainer

There is a huge supply of trainers and training providers on the market. Finding the right trainer is not necessarily easy, even though it can be. It helps to clarify at this stage what type of trainer you're looking for, because it will allow you to exclude a large section of what is on offer. Here are some things to consider:

• What skills, knowledge and attitude are we looking for?
• How much relevant training experience should they have?
• How qualified should they be?

Determining investment

There are many factors and steps involved in getting to a well-designed, effective system. Consider for example how workload, deadlines, holidays and illness could affect the success of the training.

• How much time can each individual invest (realistically) in the training?
• How much additional resources can be spent on the training (administration, travel, etc)?

What determines success?

And leading from that, how will you measure success? If it's enough that people put a tick under the smiley face on the feedback form after the training, that's fine. But "happy sheets", as we call them, measure only the reaction to training, not the actual results. Tests measure knowledge, is that what you want? That's fine too. Whatever you're looking for when you define success, these questions will be useful:

• Which systems do we need to measure success, or progress?
• What can we do to make sure that learning is transferred to the workplace?

Again, a good training provider will be able to support you with figuring out the details of measuring the training and overall success. A great training provider will already have systems in place and will be able to provide detailed reports.

The next step

Now you can start thinking in more detail about the design and share the requirements for your system with an expert. The systematics of that will all be explained in a future post.

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