Use of competency-based needs analysis in developing employee training program

The professional training of land survey field personnel has traditionally been gained through either time-consuming on-the-job experience or from costly comprehensive educational instruction. Development of an effective training program that quickly trains personnel in the most important knowledge skills to be competent in their job would help to limit these factors. In order to develop such an effective training program, analysis of the essential training needs could be conducted. In this paper a case study is presented where the conventional needs analysis methodology has been modified to identify the most critical knowledge gaps associated with competent performance of survey field personnel at a mid-sized company specializing in geospacial data collection. Through utilization of this competency-based needs analysis methodology, the company was able to efficiently determine the critical training needs for survey personnel in addition to realizing an estimated 10% savings in plan development time when compared with use of conventional training methods. Keywords: Employee training, needs analysis, competence, case study
INTRODUCTION The professional training of field personnel in the land surveying industry has traditionally been implemented through either an on-the-job/apprentice training process or from the delivery of periodic off-the-shelve training [...]