Training Needs Analysis (TNA): Steps, Template and Example for Training Providers

A training needs analysis (TNA) finds the gap between what people can do at work and what their job requires, works out what is causing it, and checks whether training is the way to close it. It looks at three levels: the organization, the job or task, and the individual.

For a training provider, it is how a client’s request for a course becomes the right course: ask what prompted the request, look at the client’s own evidence, rule out the causes training cannot fix, and hand back a short report that becomes the course specification and the evaluation plan.

Most of the search results for “training needs analysis” are written for employers analyzing their own staff: HR software vendors, learning platforms, the CIPD and public bodies such as the NHS and the US Office of Personnel Management. A provider meets the same process from the other side of the table, with someone else’s people and data, and a sale at the end of it. A worked example and a template that copies into a spreadsheet are further down.

Key takeaways

• A TNA looks at three levels: the organization, the job or task, and the individual. A provider can ask about all three, but the evidence for the first two sits with the client.
• When a request arrives as the name of a course, treat the name as a hypothesis and ask what happened that made someone ask for it.
• Check whether the gap is one training can close. If people could do the task when they had to, or something at work stops them, a course will not change the result.
• Ask the client for the evidence they already hold, such as incident logs, audit findings, complaints, error reports and competency frameworks, before you run a survey of your own.
• A needs matrix, one row for each role and task, turns the evidence into a plan: the cause of each gap, whether training will help, and who acts.
• The output is a short report the client can approve: what was asked for, what you found, what training will and will not fix, the course you recommend and how both sides will know it worked.

What a training needs analysis is

A training needs analysis compares the knowledge, skills and behaviors a job requires with what people currently show, and asks why the difference exists. The US Office of Personnel Management describes the purpose as identifying “performance requirements and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed” by a workforce, and says the assessment should reveal both the gap and its causes.

The CIPD draws a distinction worth keeping. Its factsheet calls a learning needs analysis an ongoing “health check on the skills, talent and capabilities of the organisation”, and a training needs analysis “a one-off isolated event looking at the needs for a specific training activity”. Client work tends to be the second kind, scoped to one group of people and one program.

The Open University’s OpenLearn course describes a classic TNA as examining needs at three levels: organization, job-task and individual. The OPM’s three are organizational, occupational and individual.

Level	The question	Evidence a provider can ask the client for
Organization	What does the business need to change, and why now?	The business plan or the goal behind the request, audit or inspection findings, incident and complaint figures, a new regulation or contract
Job or task	What does the role require someone to do, and to what standard?	Job descriptions, competency frameworks, procedures, the license or certificate the role needs
Individual	Who has the gap, and how big is it?	Appraisal and supervision notes, assessment results, certificate records, a short skills check or questionnaire

Training needs analysis vs training needs assessment

The two names are used for the same work. The US Office of Personnel Management calls the whole process a training needs assessment, which it defines as “the process of identifying the ‘gap’ between performance required and current performance”, followed by the causes of the gap and the ways to close it. Where a distinction is drawn, the assessment collects the evidence about the gap and the analysis interprets it. Two neighboring terms mean something slightly different.

Term	What it usually means
Training needs analysis (TNA)	A one-off look at the gap for a specific group or program, and whether training will close it
Training needs assessment	The same process, or only its evidence-gathering part
Learning needs analysis (LNA)	An ongoing review of an organization’s capabilities, tied to its strategy
Skills gap analysis	A comparison of the skills a team needs with the skills it has, often laid out as a matrix, without the question of whether training is the fix

Whatever the client’s brief calls it, the job for a provider is the same.

Where a provider meets it

A provider meets needs analysis in three situations, and each calls for a different amount of work.

The first is a client who asks for a named course: “IOSH Managing Safely for eight staff in Leeds in November”. The analysis here is a scoping conversation of half an hour to an hour, plus a look at whatever evidence the client can share. Its job is to confirm the course fits the problem, set the pitch and the examples, and agree what success looks like.

The second is a client who asks you to find out what their people need. That is a diagnostic project, with interviews, data and a written report, and it deserves a scope and often a fee. Some providers package it in tiers. Swinburne Edge, Swinburne University of Technology’s workforce training service in Melbourne, lists three options on its TNA page: a complimentary meeting of up to an hour with a written proposal, a data-led strategic workforce planning service, and a facilitated seven-phase analysis.

The third is your own catalog. Deciding which open courses to run, in which formats and where, is a needs analysis at market level, and the evidence comes from your own records rather than a client’s.

In the first two situations, several people hold part of the answer. The table shows who does what.

Who	What they want	What you do	What they do
The person buying (an L&D or HR lead, or an operations manager)	The problem solved at a price they can defend	Run the scoping call, ask for evidence, write the report and the proposal	Explain why they are asking, share the data, approve the report
The learners’ managers	People who can do the job without being chased	Ask what they see going wrong and what good looks like	Describe the gap, then support the new behavior after the course
The learners	A course that fits their work and does not repeat what they know	Send a short questionnaire or skills check before the course	Say what they do now and where they struggle
Your team	A course that can be delivered and assessed as agreed	Turn the findings into the course specification, the trainer brief and the measures	Prepare examples and assessments that match the client’s work

When training is not the answer

The most useful question in a needs analysis is whether the gap is one training can close. People fail to perform for many reasons, and a lack of knowledge or skill is only one of them.

Robert Mager and Peter Pipe’s Analyzing Performance Problems (second edition, 1984) built a flowchart around this question. It starts with whether the problem is a skill or knowledge deficiency at all. If it is, it asks whether the person used to be able to do it and how often the skill is used, which points to practice or a job aid rather than a full course. If it is not, it looks at consequences and obstacles: whether doing the task properly is punished, whether doing it badly is rewarded, whether the task seems to matter to anyone, and whether something in the way stops it.

Thomas Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model, from Human Competence (1978), makes the same point from another angle. It sorts the causes of performance into the environment (information, resources and incentives) and the individual (knowledge, capacity and motives). Gilbert held that the greatest barrier to good performance was missing support at work, and that the environment should be checked before the person. The OPM’s guidance agrees for public employers: clarifying expectations, a supportive work environment and checking job fit can close some gaps, and are needed to sustain what training builds.

For a provider, this is uncomfortable, because the right finding sometimes costs a sale. It is also where trust is built. A client who hears “half of this is a staffing problem, and here is the part a course will fix” is more likely to come back than one who is sold a course that changes nothing.

How to do a training needs analysis in six steps

The same six steps work for a scoping call about a named course and for a full diagnostic project for a client. The difference is how much time each step gets.

The first conversation

A request for a named course already contains a solution. The first conversation turns it back into a problem. Ask these, in roughly this order.

Ask	What the answer tells you
What happened that made you look for this course now?	The trigger: an incident, an audit, a new contract, a complaint, a new hire group, a renewal date
What should people do differently once it is done?	The behaviors the course has to change, and the start of your evaluation plan
How would you know it had worked?	The result the client cares about, and whether they already measure it
Who are the learners, and what do they do day to day?	The level, the examples and the format the course needs
What have you tried already?	What did not work, and why
Is there anything that makes the right way harder to do at work?	Obstacles a course cannot remove, which belong in the report
Does a regulation, standard or customer require this training?	A minimum the course has to meet, and the certificate the learners need
When does it need to be done, and is there a budget?	Whether the scope fits, and whether a diagnostic is worth proposing

Kirkpatrick Partners say it is “critical to start with Level 4: Results” when planning training. The second and third questions above are that step. The answers go straight into the evaluation agreement described in How to Evaluate Training, so the analysis and the evaluation are planned in the same conversation.

The client’s evidence

The client’s own records are more credible than anything a provider can collect in a week. Ask for them early, and agree how they will be anonymized and shared.

Evidence	What it shows	Who usually holds it
Incident, accident and near-miss logs	Where and how often things go wrong, and in which teams	Health and safety lead
Audit and inspection findings	Gaps an outside body has already named, often with a deadline	Quality or compliance lead
Complaints and customer feedback	Where the service falls short in the customer’s eyes	Customer service or operations
Error, rework and quality reports	The tasks people get wrong, and the cost	Operations
Competency frameworks and job descriptions	The standard each role is meant to reach	HR
Training and certificate records	Who holds which certificate, and when each one expires	HR or the training coordinator
Appraisal and supervision notes	Individual gaps managers have already noticed	Line managers, often summarized by HR

Managers and learners

Data shows where the gap is, and people explain why. The CIPD lists the usual methods: interviews and focus groups with stakeholders, informal conversations, observation of learners in their real working environment, questionnaires and surveys, existing management information, competency frameworks, performance data and documents such as business plans and job descriptions, and recommends combining several.

Method	Good for	Watch out for
Interviews with managers	Why the gap exists, and what good looks like	A few loud views standing in for everyone’s
Learner questionnaire	Reaching a large group quickly, and setting a baseline	People rating their own skill higher or lower than it is
Observation	Seeing the task as it is done, obstacles included	Time, and people working differently while watched
Skills check or pre-test	Measuring the gap directly	Testing what is easy to test rather than what matters
Records and data	Patterns over time, and a baseline for the result	Data that is incomplete or recorded inconsistently

A learner questionnaire also serves the course itself. Answers about current practice, experience and confidence tell the trainer how to pitch the day, and the same questions asked after the course give a before-and-after comparison for the client.

Training needs analysis example

The example below is illustrative, but the pattern is a common one: the request names a course, the evidence points somewhere slightly different, and the recommendation is smaller and more likely to work.

Step	What happened
The request	An energy company asks for a customer service course for 25 contact center staff, because complaints have risen since a price change.
The first conversation	The operations manager wants fewer complaints about bills, and already counts them in a monthly report. Nothing has been tried beyond a team briefing.
The client’s evidence	Most of the new complaints are about bills being explained wrongly, and most come from calls taken by the nine staff who joined in the last six months. The knowledge base article on the new rates is out of date.
Managers and learners	Team leaders say experienced staff use a one-page crib sheet that new hires were never given. The learner questionnaire shows low confidence with angry callers across the team.
The analysis	Explaining the new rates is a knowledge gap for the new hires, which a course can close. The out-of-date article and the missing crib sheet are not training problems. Handling angry callers is a skill gap across the team.
The report	A half-day course on the new rates and reading a bill for the nine new hires, and a 90-minute session on difficult calls for all 25. The client updates the article and gives everyone the crib sheet before the course. Success is fewer complaints about bill explanations for every 1,000 calls in the client’s own report, three months before and after, plus team leader call reviews four and eight weeks after the course.

The client asked for one course for 25 people. The recommendation is a shorter course for nine, a session for everyone and two fixes on the client’s side. It is a smaller first order, with a far better chance of a result the buyer can show their own manager.

Training needs analysis template

The template has two parts: a needs matrix that turns the evidence into a plan, and a checklist for the six steps. The structure of the report itself is in The report you hand back.

The needs matrix

Use one row for each role and task. The rows below come from the worked example; replace them with your own.

Role	Task or standard	Evidence of the gap	Cause	Will training help?	Action, and who takes it	Priority
New hires, contact center	Explain the new rates on a bill	Most bill complaints come from their calls	Never trained on the new rates	Yes	Provider: half-day course on rates and bills	High
All contact center staff	Find current rate information during a call	The knowledge base article is out of date	Workplace: the article was not updated	No	Client: update the article, share the crib sheet	High
All contact center staff	Calm an angry caller and agree on a next step	Low confidence in the learner questionnaire	Skill rarely practiced	Yes	Provider: 90-minute session on difficult calls	Medium

Keep the rows where training will not help, with the client’s name against the action, because they show the buyer you looked past the course they asked for.

The step checklist

Step	Done when
1. The request	You have the request in the client’s words, who made it and the deadline behind it
2. The first conversation	You know the trigger, what should change, how the client will measure it, the learners, what was tried, the obstacles and any legal or customer requirement
3. The client’s evidence	You have asked for the records they hold, agreed how they are shared, and received them
4. Managers and learners	You have spoken to a few managers and, for a large group, sent a short learner questionnaire
5. The analysis	Every gap is in the needs matrix with its cause, and the rows are ranked
6. The report	The client has approved the report, which becomes the course specification and the evaluation plan

When the need is set by law or a standard

Some needs are decided before anyone asks. In the UK, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to give adequate health and safety training when people are recruited and when they are exposed to new or increased risks, such as a new job, new equipment or a new system of work (regulation 13). The training must be repeated periodically where appropriate. Under Australia’s model Work Health and Safety Regulations, the training a business provides must be “suitable and adequate” having regard to the nature of the work, its risks and the control measures in place (regulation 39). In the US, OSHA’s guide to training requirements notes that many of its standards include explicit training requirements.

Some buyers also have to show their analysis. NHS organizations in England completing the Data Security and Protection Toolkit must produce a training needs analysis covering all staff roles, set how often each role is trained, and have the analysis “formally endorsed” by the board or equivalent.

For compliance training, the analysis is a matrix: each role, the training it needs, how often, and who is due when. A provider that can produce that matrix from the client’s records, and keep it current, is solving a problem the buyer has to answer to someone else for. Training Certificates and CPD covers expiry dates and renewals, which is where that matrix turns into repeat bookings.

The report you hand back

The report is short, and its structure follows the conversation. Write it for someone who will forward it to their own manager.

Section	What goes in
What was asked for	The original request, in the client’s words
What we found	The gap at each level, with the evidence for it
What training will fix	The skills and knowledge a course can build, and for whom
What it will not fix	Obstacles at work, staffing, equipment or incentives, with a suggestion for each
What we recommend	The course or courses, the learning outcomes, the format, the group sizes and the timing
How we will know it worked	The result, the behaviors to observe, who observes them and when, and what you will report
What the client does	Brief the managers, release the learners, share the follow-up data

A private contract often needs sign-off from more than one person on the client’s side. How to Sell Training to Corporate L&D Buyers covers the approval, ordering and evidence stages the report will pass through.

The “how we will know” section is the evaluation plan in miniature. Agreeing it here means the course is designed against the result, and the follow-up is already arranged when the course date arrives.

Charging for the analysis

Whether to charge depends on the size of the work. A scoping call for a named course is part of selling it. A diagnostic that involves interviews across sites, data analysis and a written report is consultancy, and pricing it as such makes the client take part properly.

Some ways to structure it:

• Offer a fixed-length scoping call free, and quote the diagnostic as a separate piece of work.
• Credit the diagnostic fee against the training order if the client goes ahead.
• Fix the scope in writing: the number of interviews, the data you will review, the questionnaire and the report.
• Set a time limit for the client’s side as well as yours, because a diagnostic can stall while waiting for data.

How to Price Your Training Courses covers day rates and private-course pricing, which apply to diagnostic work as well.

Needs analysis for your open courses

For open courses, the client is the market, and your own records are the evidence. The signals worth reading regularly:

• Inquiries for courses you do not run, or for dates and places you do not offer.
• Waitlists, and courses that fill well ahead of the date.
• Certificates due to expire among past learners, by course and by employer.
• Feedback answers about what learners wanted more of, or what they would book next.
• Changes to regulations, qualifications and awarding body requirements that create new demand or retire old courses.
• What employers ask for when they book groups, and how many of those requests become private courses.

Read these together every quarter rather than one at a time. A course that keeps appearing in inquiries, waitlists and group requests is a better bet than one suggested by a single conversation. How to Fill Your Training Courses covers what to do once the dates are set.

Asking each learner before the course

Even when the client has done its own analysis, a short questionnaire to the learners before the course is worth sending. Keep it to five questions or fewer, sent a week or two before the date.

• What is your role, and how long have you been doing it?
• How often do you do the tasks this course covers?
• Which part of them do you find hardest?
• How confident are you doing them today? (four labeled choices)
• Is there a situation from your work you would like the course to cover?

The trainer reads the answers before the day. The confidence question, asked again at the end of the course, gives the client a before-and-after figure for its report.

Where Cademy fits

The analysis itself is your expertise: the questions, the judgment about what training can fix, the report. What surrounds it is a trail of forms, emails, records and dates that has to stay connected, from the first inquiry to the private course and the follow-up. Cademy keeps that trail on the client’s record.

The first answers

Cademy’s general forms sit outside the checkout, for inquiries, expressions of interest and applications, and embed on your own website. You write the questions, so the scoping questions above can be the form. Validation can require a company email address, which keeps the answers tied to an employer. Each response lands in the inbox on the contact who sent it, and you reply from the same thread.

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PS

Priya Shah

Can we move two of ours from 8 Oct to the 30 Sep date?

9/24/26, 9:12 AM

TW

Tom Whitaker

PO number for order ORD-1056 is NG-4471, thanks

9/24/26, 8:41 AM

LA

Lena Adeyemi

Could I have my Fire Marshal certificate re-sent?

9/23/26, 4:20 PM

MR

Marcus Reid

New response to How was your workshop?

9/23/26, 2:05 PM

MO

Mark Okafor

IOSH Managing Safely for 8 staff in Leeds, November

9/23/26, 11:37 AM

PS

Priya Shah

Oakfield Care · Fire Marshal · Thu 8 Oct

Open contact

Can we move two of ours from 8 Oct to the 30 Sep date? Lena and Ruth both need it before their site audit.

Priya Shah · 9:12 AM

Done. Lena and Ruth are on Wed 30 Sep in Leeds; new confirmations have gone out and the 8 Oct places are released. Same order, no new invoice.

You · 9:31 AM

Brilliant, thank you.

Priya Shah · 9:34 AM

Write a reply…

MO

Mark Okafor

Oakfield Care · Tell us about your training needs

Open contact

Form response9/23/26, 11:37 AM

Which course are you asking about?

IOSH Managing Safely

How many people, and in which roles?

8 shift supervisors, Leeds

What has prompted this now?

Two incidents in the laundry since July. Our insurer has asked what safety training our supervisors have had.

What should change once it is done?

Supervisors spot and report hazards before someone is hurt.

When does it need to happen?

Before the end of November

Work email

mark.okafor@oakfieldcare.co.uk

Thanks Mark. Before we fix a date, could we have half an hour with you and two of the supervisors' managers? It would help to see the two incident reports first.

You · 11:52 AM

Write a reply…

The client’s record

Contacts are linked to their organization by email domain, and the organization record holds the key contact and billing contact, its people, its orders, its registrations and its private courses. When the analysis turns into a booking, the private date is created from the organization’s Private Courses tab, so it is linked to the client from the start. Notes with attachments sit on the course date, which is a natural place for the approved report, and custom fields on dates can hold the measures you agreed.

For compliance work, each organization has its own registrations tab, and registrations sort and export by certificate expiry date, which is the starting point for the role-by-role matrix. After the course, the feedback form asks your own questions on completion, and the results sit beside the attendance and assessment records when you write the follow-up. How to Evaluate Training covers that part in detail.

To see your own scoping form set up this way, book a call and bring the questions you ask now. Training CRM shows the rest of the client record.

Frequently asked questions

What is a training needs analysis? A training needs analysis identifies the gap between the knowledge, skills and behaviors a job requires and what people currently show, finds the causes of that gap, and decides whether training is the right way to close it. The result is a recommendation for who needs which training, at what level and when.

What are the three levels of a training needs analysis? The organization, the job or task, and the individual. The organizational level asks what the business needs to change. The task level asks what each role requires. The individual level asks who has a gap and how large it is. The US Office of Personnel Management calls them organizational, occupational and individual.

What is the difference between a training needs analysis and a training needs assessment? The terms are often used interchangeably, and the US Office of Personnel Management uses training needs assessment as its name for the process. Where a distinction is drawn, the assessment is the collection of evidence about the gap and the analysis is the work of interpreting it. The CIPD separates a training needs analysis, a one-off look at a specific training activity, from a learning needs analysis, which is an ongoing review of an organization’s capabilities.

How do you conduct a training needs analysis? Start with the request and the business problem behind it. Gather the evidence the organization already holds, then talk to managers and learners. Separate the gaps training can close from the ones it cannot, rank what remains, and write a short report with a recommendation and a plan for checking the result.

What should a training needs analysis template include? A needs matrix with one row for each role and task: the standard required, the evidence of the gap, its cause, whether training will help, the action and who takes it, and a priority. Add a scoping record of the first conversation, and a short report covering what was asked for, what you found, what you recommend and how the result will be measured.

What is an example of a training needs analysis? A provider asked for a customer service course for 25 contact center staff finds that most complaints come from new hires who were never trained on a price change, and that a knowledge base article is out of date. It recommends a short course for the new hires, a session on difficult calls for everyone, and two fixes the client makes itself.

What methods are used in a training needs analysis? Interviews and focus groups, questionnaires and surveys, observation of people at work, skills checks or pre-tests, and existing records such as incident logs, audit findings, appraisal notes and competency frameworks. The CIPD recommends combining several methods.

Should a training provider charge for a training needs analysis? A short scoping conversation for a named course is usually part of the sale. A diagnostic project with interviews, data analysis and a written report is consultancy work, and providers often price it separately or credit the fee against the training order.

When is training not the answer to a performance problem? When people could do the task if they had to, when something at work stops them, or when doing it properly is not expected or rewarded. Mager and Pipe’s performance analysis flowchart and Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model both direct attention to these causes before training is chosen.

Is a training needs analysis a legal requirement? UK and Australian health and safety law requires training that is adequate for the work and its risks, which means working out who needs what. UK employers must train people on recruitment and when risks change, and Australia’s model WHS Regulations require training suitable and adequate for the work, its risks and the controls. Some buyers, such as NHS organizations completing the Data Security and Protection Toolkit, must produce a documented training needs analysis.

Sources

Quotations and details checked on the publishers’ own pages on October 19, 2026, and the CIPD and OPM pages again on November 11, 2026.

Show all 11 sources

• US Office of Personnel Management, Training and development: planning and evaluating
• CIPD, Learning needs analysis factsheet (August 2025)
• The Open University, OpenLearn: Training needs analysis (TNA)
• Swinburne University of Technology, Swinburne Edge: training needs analysis
• Mager, R. F. and Pipe, P., Analyzing Performance Problems, second edition (Lake Publishing, 1984)
• Gilbert, T. F., Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance (McGraw-Hill, 1978)
• Kirkpatrick Partners, The Kirkpatrick Model
• The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 13
• NT WorkSafe, Information, training and instruction (model WHS Regulations, regulation 39)
• OSHA, Training Requirements in OSHA Standards (OSHA 2254, 2015)
• NHS England Digital, Data Security and Protection Toolkit: training needs analysis and delivery (3.1.1 to 3.1.3)