Key Performance Analysis

Key performance analysis is unlike ordinary training needs analysis in a number of important respects. Training needs analysis tends to look back and identify skill shortfalls. Key performance analysis looks forward to identify training needs that are linked to operational results. This involves a seven step process which involves looking at the following questions:

• Why does the organisation need this person to occupy the position that they do? What is his or her core function?
  
• What does he or she need to do to perform this function? What are the main activities that produce results for the organisation? What are the key result areas?
  
• In each of these areas, consider how you know that the person is doing what they say and doing it well.
  
• How can you tell whether the job is being done better or worse from one month to the next? What is the proof? This proof may be behavioural objectives, customer feedback, peer feedback, supervisor feedback, but it needs to be evidenced in a useful way. It's no use saying that Alan does a good job, because he has managed to do the job well and because he is liked. We need to know whether he met the criteria for the behavioural objective, to know how much positive customer feedback he receives over what time period and which deadlines were met for the amount of work processed.
  
• Against the measures of how well the person does the job, how well is he or she actually doing? What is the current achievement level? You could record this for a month.
  
• Is everyone concerned happy with the current achievement level? What steps does the individual employee need to take to improve this level of achievement in each of the key result areas?
  
• If these steps are taken (and these could include training), how much could the employee improve on last month's achievement level? What would the objectives be?

You can turn this into an action plan for strategic training as shown below.

Once you've decided what it is that you want your employees to learn - the content, the next thing that you need to consider is the process - how they are to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes that you want.