Tight Budget? Short Timeline? No Problem. Global Food and Beverage Company Leverages Needs Assessment from Allen to Improve Existing ILT Courses.
SALT LAKE CITY (March 7, 2008)—Like many organizations, in 2007 this global food and beverage company's training department faced several typical training challenges: long training sessions, huge classes, bland PowerPoints, and disengaged learners. Also typical were the time and budgetary limitations they faced to overcome their challenges. Seeking to improve their training, but knowing every dollar and minute spent was critical to successfully addressing their issues, the team determined a needs assessment was a crucial first step.
Consequently, the company brought on Allen Communication Learning Services to conduct the assessment. Allen was tasked with uncovering gaps and consulting on the best methods for closing those gaps. Additionally, budgetary and timeline realities required that Allen take a very practical approach.
As a result, Allen concentrated on four specific areas for evaluation: audience, technology, existing content, and performance objectives. Through employee surveys and leadership interviews, Allen discovered employees found training sessions too long, too large, too unspecific to their roles, and information heavy. Consequently, employees were disengaged. Allen revealed that by improving the look and feel of the courseware along with using PowerPoint templates and icons for consistency, group activities, breakaway sessions, timelines, and less information per slide, the company would engage their employees and expand learner retention.
Thanks to the assessment, Allen showed the company how they could take their current training and easily improve it while staying within budget and deadlines. Suffice to say, the needs assessment proved to be beneficial by effectively addressing known challenges (learner engagement, etc.), helping them uncover gaps in their content, and understanding where to focus development to get the most for their dollars and time.
“While our client was expecting a report detailing useful information, “said Ron Zamir, CEO of Allen, “they weren’t expecting the insight, thoroughness, and useful suggestions our solution provided.”
One of the company's managers even stated that the needs analysis was “way more value than we ever expected” and that Allen provided the “highest amount of benefit” for their limitations in time and budget. In fact, the company has already begun implementing the suggestions into their ILTs.
About Allen:
For over 25 years,
Allen Communication Learning Services has helped improve the training processes and methods of numerous Fortune 500 companies. With a rich history in training that started with the introduction of the world’s first commercial interactive videodisc system, today the company is recognized as a
leading provider of custom learning solutions. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Allen’s mission is to align organizations’ training initiatives with their business objectives by developing the optimal learning solution for each organization.