EMPLOYEE NEEDS ASSESSMENT
Employee Needs assessment
Sharon Sweeney Wallace
Capella University
Instructor: Lori White
May 19, 2013
Employee Needs assessment
Organizations have long recognized that employees make contributions through a work behavior that leads to measurable performance. The appraisal process helps management assess this contribution as well as identify areas that need improvement. As a formal process, appraisal is a part of a performance system designed to manage an organizations human resources. The growing complexity of customer, employee and management relationships requires a new leadership paradigm. This is certainly true in today’s highly competitive market place where a premium is placed on the development of human capital. Management of today’s workforce has been made more difficult by the implementation of the contemporary business practices such as downsizing, reengineering, Total Quality Management (TQM), employee empowerment and team performance systems. These changes have altered the dynamics of the traditional management and employee relationships. The increase in layoffs globally has placed organizations in a more complicated position to manage their workforces. Business organizations have continued to develop sophisticated performance management systems to manage their human resources and to identify leaders to sustain growth of the company (Kusluvan, 2003).
Employee performance can be improved in many ways. Employee selection is not an effective way to improve productivity in situations where only a few applicants compete for a large number of openings or a job involves only easily learned tasks. When such situations are encountered, training rather than selection techniques must be emphasized.
Determining the needs of employees within an organization and jobs to be filled are significant aspects of human resource management process. Having the right number of people with the right training in the right jobs to meet its sales goals for the new product is essential in a viable organization. Job analysis should be done by human resource planners to know what skills different jobs require. Job description which involves the skills knowledge and abilities of a person must have to fill a job as spelled out in job specifications.
The methods used to determine employee needs include focus groups, interviews, surveys, satisfaction feedback and exit interviews. All these methods are good sources of gathering data to determine the needs of employees in organizations. Whatever method used, the key to having a good approach is to ask the right questions and to use multiple data gathering methods. Formal employee surveys are good ways of periodically taking a reading of morale levels and identifying potential problems before they get out of hand. The problem of survey is that it gives you no depth for example surveys shows that sixty percent of your employees are not satisfied with the Company’s approach to safety. This only gives you enough information to tell you to do more data gathering. A survey will not provide you with sufficient details to go on and solve a problem. Other data collection methods are used to gather more detailed data. One of the best ways of getting at this detail is focus group of about six to ten employees who are called together to have a confidential discussion about a particular issue. With a skilled facilitator, a great deal of information can be brought out that will tell you exactly what the problem is and give you some clues as how to remedy it. Personal interviews with employees either alone or in small groups probably constitute the most important method of determining employees needs. A simplified questionnaire is another method used and it has two major parts. One determines benefit preferences and the other determines demographic data such as age, sex, marital status, years of service and salary range. The questionnaire is simplified because the employees are basically asked only to indicate and or rank their preferences. However, the actual analysis of the data that are gathered may be a complex task and unless a firm is small, it probably will require use of a computer. It is important to use a clear and brief questionnaire that is not annoying to employees. Consequently, it is best that questionnaires initially be given to only few employees in order to test their reaction. Personal interviews fail to measure the intensity of employees’ preferences. However some firms have used sophisticated marketing research techniques in an attempt to measure the degree of importance that employees place on various benefit alternatives. These sophisticated research techniques are typically used only when specific alternatives have been formulated by the employer. Therefore, they are often used as follow- up to personal interviews and simplified questionnaires, also involve additional interviews or questionnaires.
Most organizations if not all face some huge risks and liabilities in addressing people’s problems if not handled properly. Some of the risks are legal while others involve employee morale, productivity and organization’s reputation. Employers have recruited employees who are not performers, do disruptive things, violate a rule or just fail to get things done as required. Then in such a case you must deal with it. Discipline should be administered and should not be taken as a way of mistreating or punishing employees but should be viewed as a way of helping employees to understand what is expected of them, about solving problems, achieving desired levels of performance and getting results.
References Brown, M. G. (1996). Keeping Score: Using the Right Metrics to Drive World Class
performance. USA: AMACOM.
Kusluvan, S. (2003). Managing Employee attitudes and Behaviors in the Tourism and
Hospitality Industry. New York: Nova Science publishers, Inc.