Skills Needs Assessment Process To Support Economic Development. HRD & ALL Research Series. Paper 90-01.

The purpose of skills-training needs-assessment is to identify what type of skills and knowledge are needed to support economic strategies and, as a result, improve organizational decisionmaking related to training investments and general work force development. This paper presents findings of 11 skills-retraining, needs-assessment, action-research studies, which were conducted from 1987 to 1989. The studies sought to gather information about skills-needs-assessment processes, their supporting theoretical bases, and work force training and deployment-decision paradigms. The studies involved six organizations, two industries, and two regional planning efforts. The paper describes a set of interactive issues that relate to locus and type of control, purposes, and type of needs-assessment intervention. It also identifies decision-making paradigms to support work force training and redeployment. Four hypotheses were supported, which conclude that a skills-assessment process should: (1) be client-centered, pragmatic, and focused on utility outcomes; (2) have generalizable, practical outcomes; (3) be grounded in economic, research, and systems theories; and (4) show a relationship between the data and decisions to support work force training. Five figures are included. Appendices contain case-study profiles of the 11 organizations and commonly used decision-making paradigms. (LMI)