Comprehensive Training Needs Assessment Report: BHP Billiton

This report presents a training needs assessment conducted for BHP Billiton, an Australian company in the hospitality sector. The assessment was initiated due to a decline in customer satisfaction and identified a gap in employees' communication skills, particularly in understanding the needs of foreign clients. The report details the reasons for the assessment, the methods used (questionnaires and work samples), and the potential consequences of an improperly conducted analysis, including wasted resources and decreased employee morale. It concludes that BHP Billiton needs to validate its initial understanding of training needs through a thorough assessment to ensure the effectiveness of future training programs.

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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................3
Training and Development.................................................................................................................3
Training Need Assessment/Training Need Analysis............................................................................3
Company Background........................................................................................................................4
Training Need Analysis at BHP Billiton.....................................................................................4
Reason for assessing the training needs.............................................................................................4
Method to conduct a need assessment..............................................................................................5
Effects of an improperly conducted training need analysis......................................................7
Conclusion...............................................................................................................................8
Bibliography............................................................................................................................9

Introduction
Training and Development
Training and development is one of the most important core functions under human resource
management and is aimed at increasing the competencies, knowledge and skills of the workforce
of an organisation, in order to optimise their performance levels (Nimmo, Clapham, &
Consultant, 2016). The difference between training and development is that training is a program
that is aimed at increasing job related skills or knowledge of the employees whereas
development is aimed at bringing about an overall development in the workforce.
In today’s rapidly changing global business environment, it is becoming difficult for business
organisations to survive in the market because of technological, economic, social, political and
environmental changes. Further, the increase in the level of competition between rival firms has
also made market survival difficult. As a result, business organisations are now relying on their
human resources for achieving market competencies and are continuously training and
developing them to increase their competencies and skills.
Training Need Assessment/Training Need Analysis
Training Need Assessment, also known as Training Need Analysis or TNA, is a process that is
used by business organisations to identify the training needs of its employees. As discussed
above, market changes are forcing business organisations to implement training and development
programs for employees so that they can cope up with the market changes and can perform up to
the expectations of the company (Dahiya & Jha, 2011). The cost associated with training and
development programs can be huge, which makes it important for business organisations to
assess whether they are targeting the right training needs, which will enable the employees to
meet the desired performance levels (Cascio, 2018). This report is aimed at conducting a
training need assessment for an organisation and gain a deeper insight into the process of
conducting a training need assessment.

Company Background
BHP Billiton is a company based in Australia that operates in the hospitality sector. BHP Billiton
is one of the industrial leaders in its area of operations and is famous for its ability to offer
excellent and timely services to its clients. The company experiences a lot of demand during the
peak seasons while the demand is above the average industry rate during off-seasons. As the
company operates in the hospitality industry, it experiences high competition and is largely
dependent on the ability of its human resources to serve the clients, in order to achieve market
competencies. As a result, the company is continuously looking for training and development
programs that could help it in increasing the competencies of its workforce.
Training Need Analysis at BHP Billiton
As discussed above, the company is highly dependent on the competencies of its workforce as a
competitive workforce can serve the clients better, which in turn would help the company in
establishing a stronger customer base and in outperforming its competitors in the Australian
market.
Reason for assessing the training needs
BHP Billiton is one of the industrial leaders in Australia when it comes to hospitality but the
company has been losing its reputation in the past few months. Thanks to the performance
management system designed by the human resource management of the company, it became
easier for the company to analyse the performance gaps, which motivated the company to
conduct a training need assessment as the performance levels demonstrated by various teams had
failed to meet the expected performance levels.
The company has recently experienced a peak holiday season and had prepared its entire
workforce in accordance with the demand that the company had experienced in the previous
peak season. The management of the company had expected heavy demand from its clients but
the overall peak season did not prove to be as profitable as the previous peak season. The
company analysed the outputs after the peak season ended and discovered that the customers
who visited them in the present peak season were not much satisfied with the services offered by

the company. One of the major issues that the customers reported in the feedback forms was
related with the ability of the employees to understand their requirements and offer them the
required solution within the shortest possible duration.
On further investigation, the management of the company realised that the employees had been
experiencing issues while communicating with their foreign clients because in most of the
instances, there were either linguistic barriers or the difference in accents of people belonging to
different nationalities made it difficult for the employees to understand their requirement.
Because of the inability of the employees to understand the requirements of the clients, a lot of
time was wasted in trying to understand the issue and to call other employees to mediate. As a
result, the management thought of arranging training and development programs that would
enhance the ability of its employees to communicate in different languages or understand certain
basic words that their foreign clients say while trying to explain their demands. Because of the
cost associated with training programs that are related to communication skills, the management
thought that it would be a better option if it could conduct a training need assessment before
actually implementing a training program (Sharif, 2015).
Method to conduct a need assessment
Conducting a training need assessment is not an easy task. It requires a lot of experience and
efficiency to analyse the right training needs. The inability of a company’s human resource
managers to analyse the right training needs can be a huge burden on the resources of a company
as training the employees on the basis of a wrong need analysis is wastage of money and time,
while the employees will also fail to meet the desired performance levels even after undergoing
training (Ford, 2014). To ensure that the correct training needs are analysed, it is important that
the management choses the right assessment method. Training needs of employees can be
analysed using a wide variety of methods, such as direct observation, questionnaires, interviews,
focus groups, work samples, literature review, outside intervention, etc. but for this particular
case, considering work samples of the employees and questionnaires can prove to be the two best
methods (Ahmed & Dhrubojyoti, 2015). Work samples and questionnaires can be used in the
following ways to ensure that the correct training needs are analysed:

Questionnaires: Designing questionnaires and making the workforce answer questions is one of
the best ways to analyse their training needs. The management at BHP Billiton has already
gathered some information about the area where its employees lack competency and are required
to be trained in order to serve the customers in a better way. The management of the company
can now use this information to design a questionnaire, which would contain questions regarding
the ability of the employees to effectively communicate with customers belonging to different
cultures and the ease with which they can understand the requirements of the customers (George
& Jacob, 2016). To make the process more reliable, the management can add an anonymity
clause in the questionnaire, where the employees do not have to disclose their identity while
answering the questions. Anonymity in questionnaire method is important because it eliminates
fear of being judged or pointed out from the mind of the employees (Johnston, n.d.). Further, the
management can also add direct questions, such as:
- Do you feel that you lack competency in a certain field? If yes, what field is it?
- If we want to arrange a training program for you, what skills or competencies would you
like the program to target?
- Do you feel that you are performing up to the expectations of the company?
- Do you find it difficult to perform your job duties or responsibilities?
- Is there anything that prevents you from performing your duties? (INSEC, 2013)
To ensure accurate results, these questionnaires should be distributed throughout the organisation
and the feedback received from the employees should be carefully analysed by the human
resource managers. Such questions can help human resource managers in easily analysing the
right training needs of the employees. One of the biggest advantages of using anonymous
questionnaire method is that the feedback is reliable and gathering feedback from the entire
workforce can help managers in identifying major issues prevailing in the organisation
(Assesshub, 2016).
Work samples: To ensure maximum accuracy, it is always better to use at least two different
methods while identifying training needs because there is always a scope of an error. The second
method that the management can use to reinforce its findings is analysing the work of its

employees (K, 2016). To achieve reliable results, the management can call an outside entity for
an intervention without disclosing it to the employees that their work is being monitored. A third
party can be called upon to bring in people from different cultures to experience the services of
the company and identify if the workforce actually lacks communication skills and is unable to
understand the requirements of customers belonging to different cultures. Using this method can
also help in making the training need assessment more accurate because the employees will be
judged on the basis of their performance while at work and without bringing it to their
knowledge that they are being observed.
Effects of an improperly conducted training need analysis
Training need analysis is an important part of training and development programs but most
organisations do not pay much heed to it. Business organisations, which do not conduct training
need analysis or are not able to carry it out accurately, are often found to implement training
programs that do not target the competencies or skills that their workforce actually lacks
(Gough, 2010). Therefore, it is important to understand the issues that can arise if a company
fails to conduct a training need analysis properly:
First of all, failure to conduct a training need analysis can make a manager identify wrong
training needs and implement training programs that do not target the right skills or
competencies. Such training programs fail to increase the skills or competencies of the
employees and the employees are not able to transfer their learning to their jobs (Perry, 2014).
As a result, business organisations fail to meet their performance gaps even after implementing
training and development programs. Secondly, failure to conduct a need analysis can result into
wastage of important resources of a company, such as time and money (Falola, Osibanjo, & Ojo,
2014). Thirdly, training programs based on incorrect training need analysis fail to foster a
learning environment in the workplace as the employees do not feel motivated to learn the skills
being targeted in the training programs. The employees become more likely to lose their interest
in the training program, which causes the training program to fail altogether. Fourthly, training
programs with wring focus can decrease employee morale and can cause frustration amongst
them. It can further increase absenteeism rates, which will ultimately lead to loss of productivity

(Simmons, 2018). Lastly, failure to conduct a training need analysis can make an organisation
teach the right skills to the wrong people or teaching the right skills in the wrong way, which
would also be a wastage of time and money (Shiftelearning, 2018).
Conclusion
BHP Billiton is a company that has been performing very well in the Australian market but the
recent changes in the market trends is having an impact on the performance of the company. The
company has an idea about the training needs of the employees, which it has identified using its
performance management system, but needs to conduct a training need assessment to check
whether it is targeting the right training needs. Targeting the right training needs and
implementing a training program on the basis of it will definitely help the company in reviving
its business, which can only be done if the training need assessment is accurately conducted.

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