Manual on Staff Development in the Public Service

2.1     Training is not effective unless it has a purpose and that purpose can only be defined if the training needs of an organisation and its employees are identified and analysed. Such an analysis should concentrate on how an organisation is performing and how it should perform; the skills and abilities of its work force and whether they are related to the organisation's needs; what individual employees are actually doing and what should be their duties should be in relation to the overall performance targets of their employing organisation.

2.2     Training needs, therefore, should primarily be analysed for the organisation as a whole, secondly for groups or units with particular functions and thirdly for individual employees. These needs should be summarised in order to establish the areas and priorities for training and the form of training to be adopted. This overall summary should include the following information:

• the number of employees in each category;

• the number of employees requiring training;

• the type of training to be provided [in-service or external]; and

• an indication of training priorities.

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