Most requests that arrive at SNDPI start the same way: “We need a training program for X.” Our first job is to find out whether that’s true.
A performance needs analysis is the front-end work that separates a training problem from everything that looks like one — a process that’s broken, a tool that fights the worker, an incentive pointed the wrong way, or an environment that makes the right action the hard one. We do this through structured observation, interviews with the people doing the work, and a look at whatever performance data already exists. We talk to the workers before we talk about the curriculum.
The deliverable is a clear recommendation about what will actually move performance — which is sometimes a training intervention, and sometimes a job aid, a process change, or a conversation with whoever owns the incentives. We will tell a client when a course is the wrong answer. It is cheaper to hear that from us than to find it out after the program ships.