Your Partner for Corporate Training Consulting and Needs Analysis
By analyzing the root causes of performance gaps, an AllenComm advisor can provide recommendations that ensure your program addresses essential needs for change. This focus avoids wasting resources on training that might not translate to real-world, measurable improvement. We recommend this service for your most strategic initiatives, where complexity or ambiguity would otherwise create risk. Depending on your needs, our training and development consultant will recommend performance consulting services that are right-sized and appropriate to the questions that need to be answered.
A conventional learning needs analysis is often too focused on what should be learned instead of what should be experienced or what learners need to be able to do. AllenComm’s unique methodology for needs analysis, called Performance Mapping, is a powerful tool that goes beyond conventional learning analysis. In addition to analyzing learning needs, this process also analyzes performance gaps and needs for learner experience. AllenComm uses the insight from this analysis to map out a personalized learning journey that transforms current behaviors into impactful performance. This is a journey that drives success and strengthens a culture of continuous learning, bringing about positive change and growth. Discover what our training and development consultant can do for you!
Case Study
PNC
When PNC, a nationwide leader in banking and financial services, wanted learning courses to support a culture of accessibility and inclusion, they requested an enterprise-wide accessibility-based learning journey for managers, employees and contractors. The goal was to affirm PNC’s commitment to creating a barrier-free environment where all individuals are included and contribute to making banking easier and more accessible.
Performance Consulting for
Transformative Learning Journeys
Before you can design a comprehensive learning journey with an optimal learner experience design (LXD), you need to fully understand the needs of learners and the organization. A performance training consultant can facilitate that analysis and recommend the most effective approaches to meet your needs. A learning needs or gap analysis helps you to set the right priorities. An evaluation of your existing curriculum helps you to further identify where there may be gaps. And a plan for assessment identifies those key performance indicators most essential for learners and management. Our performance consulting services are designed to help you enhance training for your team.
Needs or Gap Analysis
This type of analysis identifies the critical skills and knowledge your workforce needs to achieve strategic goals, ensuring that your learning programs directly address these performance gaps and contribute to measurable business results.
Process
- Identify performance objectives and audience to pinpoint the desired skills, knowledge, and mindset
- Assess the current state of your learning by gathering data, conducting surveys, and meeting with stakeholders
- Compare desired performance to the current state to prioritize gaps
Outcomes
- Present a prioritized list of knowledge, skills, and attitudinal performance gaps
- Deliver targeted learning recommendations based on the identified gaps
- Define measurable success criteria to gauge the effectiveness of the learning activities
Curriculum Evaluation
A curriculum evaluation goes beyond the typical needs analysis by assessing the effectiveness of an existing curriculum. It examines the program design, content, and delivery methods to determine if they are achieving the intended learning outcomes. This insight helps to refine existing programs or identify new needs.
Process
- Review and analyze curriculum materials, including the objectives, content, activities, and results, based on learning science and accepted practice
- Collect and analyze learner and stakeholder feedback on the program using results data, surveys, interviews, etc.
- Assess on-the-job performance to determine if the curriculum is truly closing the intended knowledge, skill, and attitudinal gaps.
Outcomes
- Deliver a revised curriculum blueprint to recommend updated objectives, content, activities, and assessment strategies
- Prepare a feedback report to summarize the feedback from learners and stakeholders, highlighting areas of strength and areas for improvement
- Present a performance impact report to share insight gathered on post-learning, on-the-job performance as an indicator of the effectiveness of the curriculum in closing learning gaps
Assessment & Analytics
An analysis focused on learner assessment and on learning analytics goes further into measurement than does a needs or curriculum analysis. The performance consultant will look at individual and collective learner data to provide insight on how learners engage with the learning and recommend adjustments to optimize learning outcomes.
Process
- Collect learner data from available sources to track behavior and performance using quizzes, formal assessments, learning completion data, on-the-job performance metrics, etc.
- Analyze and visualize available data to highlight patterns and trends using techniques like clustering and correlation analysis
- Recommend new strategies for assessment that will provide more accurate, comprehensive, and organizationally aligned metrics
Outcomes
- Create a learner segmentation report that categorizes learners based on performance data and engagement patterns to enable targeted interventions and personalized learning paths
- Report on an audit of current assessment strategies to reveal where assessments might not be effectively measuring learning outcomes
- Propose strategies for assessment optimization to recommend a new framework for a more aligned and effective approach to assessment (including adaptive and AI-powered assessment strategies)
“AllenComm [is a] powerhouse in the realm of Learning and Development (L&D) solutions…AllenComm brings unparalleled expertise to the table, consistently delivering exceptional results. What sets them apart is their focus on understanding the unique business needs and recommending tailored solutions that drive real performance and ROI.”
David Forry
SVP, Brandon Hall Group
Working with Training Consultants FAQ
What do corporate training consultants do?
When people refer to corporate training consultants, they may be referring generally to all those who provide specialized learning and development (L&D) services to the corporate market. The role of a training consultant, however, is to analyze the need for corporate training, make recommendations for the optimum learning solution, and to evaluate the efficacy of learning programs. At AllenComm, our training consultants are called performance consultants because they are focused on the end objective of changing human performance.
Why hire a corporate training consultant?
The value of a training consultant comes from the insight provided by their analysis. This insight should lead to and accelerate measurable impact in learner performance and improved business outcomes. An important component of the consultation or recommendation should be a plan for measuring value. As the L&D field becomes more specialized, it is often inefficient for an organizational L&D team to have in–house experts on every domain of expertise (learning analysis, assessment, change readiness, etc.). External consultants bring longitudinal experience from working with multiple clients, often in the same industry. The breadth and depth of their experience enables them to provide more valuable and actionable insights.
What is a performance consultant?
A performance consultant specializes in analyzing the desired on-the-job performance of a workforce. They look at the business needs and prioritize the learner behaviors that contribute most directly to achieving those goals. Only then, after they understand the performance needs, do they focus on the learning and training needs. A performance consultant conducts surveys, stakeholder interviews, and focus groups. They will evaluate business data, assessments, and other existing sources of information. Finally, they recommend a high-level LX journey that will lead to the desired performance improvement.
What is the process for a training or learning needs analysis?
Instead of looking at what needs to be learned, target root behaviors and their gaps. This will enable you to target and prioritize performance. The typical learning needs analysis results in a list of learning objectives. Instead of identifying everything a learner might need to know, filter priorities through the lens of what is most relevant for on-the-job performance and most critical to realizing organizational impact. At AllenComm, we use our process for Performance Mapping to organize the analysis and to ensure that we focus on the needs of both the business and individual learners.
